


Shaving With Your Toothpaste (Give Me a Try)

by novelogical (writingmonsters)



Category: Burnt (2015)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Because of course he does, Emotional Hurt, Feelings Realization, Fire, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Hand Jobs, House Hunting, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, M/M, Porn with Feelings, Roommates, Roommates to lovers, Shower Sex, Tony has a cat, some ptsd
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-19
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2019-10-31 15:34:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 13
Words: 33,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17852300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writingmonsters/pseuds/novelogical
Summary: A fire leaves Tony looking for a new flat. No easy task in London.Adam is the one who makes the suggestion -- roommates.A simple solution. It couldn't possibly go wrong.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [misanthropiclycanthrope](https://archiveofourown.org/users/misanthropiclycanthrope/gifts).



> Title taken from The Wombats "Just Give Me a Try" which is apparently my AdamTony theme song for the foreseeable future.

_We could be gigantic, everything I need_

_Vicodin on Sunday nights_

_This could be worth the risk, worth the guarantee_

_This could be the drug that doesn't bite_

_Just give me a try_   

Kaitlin takes the call half an hour before they open.    

“London Langham, this is --”

“ _Kaitlin? It’s Tony_.”

In the kitchen, Adam hunches over the pass with his pencil and paper, scratching out near-illegible notes on the day’s menu -- consider and re-considering the arrangement of dishes, the flavor profiles and pairing choices. Helene chops fresh ingredients, Michel clatters about with pans, Max’s rough voice rises and falls as he walks David through an unfamiliar technique, strangely patient with their young apprentice.    

The lunch menu needs going over. He needs Tony’s eyes on it -- has already sought opinions from Max and Michel on the new appetizers, but it's _Tony_ who he wants the final say from before they print off the menu boards.

He has missed this. The team they were in Paris not so long ago; the three chefs -- and Tony, the only maitre d’ capable of keeping up with the likes of Hurricane Adam.   

But where _is_ Tony?

It is Kaitlin who pushes through the kitchen doors, as though summoned. Pale-faced, the front desk's cordless phone clutched in one hand. “Chef…”    

“Hey, Kaitlin.” Distracted, Adam shaves long, thin strips of ginger root into his prep bowl. “Where the hell is Tony? He should be here by now.”

She holds the reception desk phone up as though it will answer everything, will offer the words she cannot quite manage. “He isn’t --” Her voice shakes. “There was a fire at his building. He wasn’t sure when he’d make it in.” 

The knife catches just right, takes a slice out of Adam’s thumb.

“ _Shit_.” Adam whirls, plunging his hand beneath the cold tap as he curses. _Christ_ , _Tony_. Max is already cracking open the first aid kit, searching for bandages. “God fucking -- What do you mean? A fire -- you’re sure?”

“Jesus.” Max shakes his head, winding gauze around Adam’s hand. “What happened?”

“Is he okay?”    

“I don’t --” Kaitlin shakes her head, stricken, glancing between Adam, Max, and Helene. Tony, reticent and breathless on the other end of the line, had offered few answers. “He said he was all right, but…”

“ _Shit_.” That doesn’t mean a thing. Tony would insist he was all right with his arm hanging on by a thread. Adam wrenches away from Max, impatient. Worry turns him brainless, stupid with panic as he flies around the kitchen yanking at his apron strings. “Fuck. Somebody’s gotta... I’m going --”    

 _Tony_.    

He has to be all right.

“Michel --?”

“Go.” The Frenchman is already stepping up to the pass, waving Adam off. “We’ll be fine.”

Helene is quick to agree. “We’ve got it, go see to Tony.”

Shrugging on his jacket, Adam edges for the door. “If he calls…” There is a terrible, sinking feeling in his stomach.

“I’ll have him call you.” Kaitlin, pale and frightened, is quick to move out of his path.  “Everything will be fine.”

Adam runs.

It is almost winter, the air brisk, and Adam’s leather jacket does little to mitigate the chill as he pelts down the London streets, unwilling to waste time flagging down a cab, waiting on the Tube. Passerby stare.

Tony. _Tony_.

He has to be all right -- Adam isn’t sure where the desperate conviction comes from, the bone-deep _need_ for Tony to be safe, and there isn’t time to dwell on it. Not as he approaches Bourdon Street and the air turns hazy, heavy with the smell of smoke.

Everything is cordoned off, lit up with the flash of fire engine lights and ambulances. The worst of the fire is out, the building still belligerently smouldering grey plumes of smoke.

Adam pushes past the rubberneckers and frozen bystanders, dodging the fire brigade’s barricades. _Oh, God_. “Hey!” He raises his voice, trying to be heard above the din, waving for the attention of the responders. “Hey! My friend, he --”

And then, his attention shifts sideways -- catching sight of the familiar figure silhouetted in the back of the ambulance.   

“ _Tony_!”

He nearly knocks over a loitering police officer in his haste, focused entirely on Tony.

Tony who looks absolutely terrible -- trembling, wrapped in a bright orange shock blanket, his face half-obscured by an oxygen mask.    

“Tony.” Adam draws up short. “Fuck.” 

He shivers, ashen-faced when he pulls away from the oxygen mask. “Ad -- Adam?!”

Tony’s voice is too high and too tight, unable to draw a decent breath, his lungs paralyzed with panic.    

“Easy does it, love.” The EMT rubs circles between Tony’s shoulder blades. “Deep, slow breaths for me.”    

And Adam is touching him, checking him over -- all gentle, insistent hands, needing to feel for himself that Tony is whole and safe. “Hey, are you okay?” Tony is heavy with the acrid smell of smoke. “Kaitlin said you called --”

“I…”

Adam tears his eyes away from Tony -- shaking, too-pale Tony -- to address the EMT. “Is he okay?”    

She nods, reassuring. “He’s all right, just a bit of panic is all.” And, laying a gentle hand on Tony's shoulder, she nods again. “We’re all right, yeah?”    

“Yes.” An immense struggle behind Tony's dark hazel eyes as he gathers the smoldering edges of himself back together. Forces himself to breathe a little steadier, still wild-eyed. “Adam, what are you --? You’re here...”   

“Jesus, Tony. Kaitlin said there was a fire, of course I’m here.” And yet. Three years -- he had vanished, left Tony to pick up the pieces. The restaurant had been sold. Jean Luc had died. And Adam had not been there. “Do they know what happened?”

“I don't…” Tony shakes his head. “Something about an electrical fire -- but they aren’t sure yet.”    

He sounds so tired, so miserable.    

“Shit.” Adam steps back, taking in the whole of him. Striped pajama pants and slippers, the orange shock blanket hanging off his shoulders. And -- “I didn’t know you had a cat.”

“Oh.” Tony blinks, as though he has only just remembered the little tuxedo tabby clutched against his chest. “Yes.”    

He is a mess.    

Adam makes a decision. “C’mon. You and the cat can’t just sit out here. Come back to the Langham.” With a hand on his elbow, he guides Tony to his feet under the EMT's watchful eye. Adam offers her a silent nod of thanks, Tony too shell-shocked to manage more than keeping hold of the squirming cat, leaning heavily into Adam as he lets himself be guided away.

It is visceral -- the terrible ache in Tony's heart. The longing to _go home_ , to be safe, to break apart and shatter silent and in private. But he _can't_. It is gone; everything a smoking, burnt out ruin, and Tony might just sink to the asphalt and never get up again.

His life -- little and plain as it had been -- up in ashes.

Adam tucks Tony close against his side, props him up and holds the pieces of him together. He catches Tony's jaw in the cradle of his palm, turns his face away from the worst of it. “Don’t look.” And Tony has never heard his voice so soft, so unbearably kind. “You don’t need to look at that right now.”

The Tube station isn't far, and yet the journey lasts an eternity.

Tony -- pajamas, shock blanket, and cat -- is not the strangest thing to have graced the London Underground but, swaying together in the carriage, Adam is acutely aware of how wrong it all is. How polished, carefully cultivated Tony Balerdi should not be sagging against him in the middle of a crowded train, rumpled and hollow-eyed.

Adam rubs slow circles into his back, does his best to mitigate the damage. He is no stranger to tragedy.

There is a soft chirrup from Tony's arms. The cat, curious, peering around the train with large, unblinking eyes. Adam scratches it beneath the chin.    

“Cat got a name?” Something, _anything_ to distract Tony. To distract _Adam_ from the fragile warmth in his arms.

For a moment, he thinks Tony has not heard him -- lost too deep in his own mind. Then, quiet. “ _Jefa_.”    

And knowing just enough of half-a-dozen languages is all part and parcel of being a chef. Adam has to grin. “You named your cat ‘boss’?” Somehow, it is so very Tony.

Jostling the little furball in his arms, Tony manages a fond, wavering smile of his own. “It is only fitting,” he tells Adam with great solemnity. “She certainly thinks she is the boss.”

And there he is. Little Tony.

“C’mon.” He keeps one hand on Tony, guiding him off the train and onto the platform at Oxford Circus.

He will be all right, Adam will see to it.


	2. Chapter 2

It is a five minute walk up A4201 to the Langham and Adam feels the way Tony winds himself up, the line of his shoulders tightening, the muscles of his jaw working anxiously.

He guides him around the back to the service entrance, and they will have to pass the kitchen, pass Kaitlin and the waitstaff and the questions. But Adam grips Tony firmly by the elbow and does not pause, towing him along the corridor with a look like thunder to warn off anyone who might open their mouths.

They hit the staff elevator and Adam ushers Tony inside, slams the _close door_ button to keep the rest of the world out.

Tony balks. “Where are you --?”

“My room.” Adam reels him back in, rubbing Tony's back through the blanket as they rise toward the sixth floor. “Does the hotel have a policy on pets?”

It will be all right. He can keep Tony calm, talking -- everything will be all right.

Tony scratches absently between Jefa's ears, drifting again. “Not today.”

The elevator chimes.

“Adam, I --”

He has never been known for kindness, for being gentle with fragile broken things, but this is _Tony_. And Adam has been chewed up and spat out by the world and he will offer what comfort he can for Tony now. It is the least he can do.

“Don’t.” Adam doesn't want Tony's apologies, his reassurances and promises that it will be fine, that he doesn't need to worry about him. He unlocks the suite, ushers them all inside.

Tony finally releases his grip on Jefa and she leaps to the floor, a grey and white streak that disappears under the bed.

The room is a whirlwind of mess and disorder -- a picture of Adam in all his mad, wild genius. Ducking past Tony, Adam heads for the bathroom, kicking his discarded laundry into the corner. Tony is still shivering, still smells like smoke, and so Adam cranks the shower knobs, dials up the warmth.

When he returns to the suite, Tony has not moved an inch.

There are not words for the hollowness in his heart -- the terrible, clammy grief. It is too much effort right now to manage something like sorrow. All Tony can conjure is a bone-deep exhaustion. A numbness that sits grey behind his breastbone.

He lets himself be guided -- Adam's heavy hands on his shoulders -- into the bathroom, lets Adam unwrap him from the shock blanket's cocoon.

“Here.” And then Adam is reaching for the hem of his t-shirt with _The Future Is Gay_ stamped across the front and Tony flinches, shaken from his stupor.

“I’m fine -- I am _fine_.” He bats Adam's hands away, suddenly bright with anger and emotion and it is all too _much_. He cannot cope with Adam’s careful, calloused hands -- with being undressed by him. “I do not need you to undress me like a child.”

“All right, all right!” Adam, throws his hands up in supplication. “Shout if you need anything.” He turns to go.

And Tony hesitates. Softens. “Adam?”

“Yeah, Tony?”

“Thank you.” _For everything_.

Adam squeezes his shoulder, once. A firm reassurance.

Jefa streaks out from beneath the bed to twine herself around his legs as he stumbles across the carpet, doing her best to trip Adam as he reaches for the hotel phone on the nightstand.

“ _Langham London, this is Kaitlin._ ”

“It’s Adam.” He drops heavy onto the bed, Jefa leaping up beside him. She paws at his arm. Adam wiggles his fingers for her.

“ _How’s Tony? Is he --?”_

“He’s with me.” Adam half-focuses on her Irish brogue, listening for the noise of the shower through the bathroom door. “Could you, I don’t know, pull some strings at the front desk? He’s probably gonna need a room for a few days.”

 _“Of course_.” And Tony has trained her well. Kaitlin is all succinctness and efficiency -- she does not ask any more questions.

Adam cracks the bathroom door, just far enough, raising his voice to be heard above the running water. “Tony? I’m gonna go make sure my kitchen is still in one piece.” And the pajama pants, the pride t-shirt, are crumpled up on the floor with their smell of smoke -- Adam pushes the door open just an inch further, snatches them off the floor. He leaves a clean pair of well-worn pajamas folded on the bed.

Hunkered down in the tangle of bedsheets, Jefa watches him with luminous, wary eyes.

“Keep an eye on him, okay?”

She blinks.    

It doesn’t quite register -- Adam’s voice through the door, beneath the weight of the water that burns and batters the span of Tony’s spine. He cannot hold himself up, sinks down onto the tile, curling into himself, face pressed to damp knees.

What if he hadn’t been awake?

What if he hadn’t heard the alarms?

He sinks slowly, slowly beneath the spray, trying to kill the smell of smoke in his brain, breathing in thick, humid gasps of air and still tasting cinders.

What if. What if. What if.    

What will Adam be saying in the kitchen? What has he told everyone?    

The faucet squeals and Tony fumbles for a towel and even that softness chafes against his pink, hot skin. He hurts and he hurts and he _hurts_.

What is he going to do now?    

Jefa chirps at him from the chaos of the bedcovers and the suite seems so much colder without Adam. Lifeless. There are pajamas, neatly folded among the disorder, laid out at the foot of the bed -- a clear offer.    

The flannel pants are too long in the leg, the Nirvana t-shirt loose around Tony’s slim shoulders. But they smell like Adam; his cologne, his skin. For just a moment, Tony allows himself to wrap his arms around his middle and to squeeze -- to close his eyes and imagine an embrace and feel a little less like he might crawl out of his own skin.    

Tucked into Adam’s too-big clothes, he sits on the edge of the bed, fighting down the terrible crush of emotion that threatens to overwhelm him, and he takes stock. A place to stay. Identification. Metrocard. All his necessary papers safe in their lockbox at the bank. And the flat…    

He cannot think about it yet, but his brain circles around again and again -- fire. The sting of smoke in his eyes. The panic that had seized his lungs. He cannot -- _cannot_ \-- think about it. There are matters that must be attended to now. Phone calls to be made.    

And his cellphone is a mass of molten slag somewhere in the remains of the flat.

Instead, he curls against the headboard and reaches for the hotel phone, draws the whole contraption into his lap and -- taking up the receiver -- Tony begins to make his calls.    

Jefa twitches her tail, rubs along his thigh.    

There are insurance agents to argue with. The bank. The building owner. Tony alternates between English and Spanish at a rapid clip, apologizing and wracking his brains for questions about policies, coverage, just what the hell he is supposed to do now.

“ _We’ll get things in order, rest assured_.” Stefan Whitehall is a familiar aristocratic baritone on the other end of the line, his father’s attourney, the man who has overseen the Balerdi enterprises in Antonio Balerdi Senior’s slow decline. “ _No need for you to worry about a thing._ ”

It is a stupid thing to say, but the man -- like an uncle to little Tony Balerdi -- means well by it.    

“Thank you.” Tony clutches the receiver to his ear, his grip trembling, his voice too soft. Quavering. 

He can almost hear the hesitation before Whitehall prompts gently “ _are you sure you’re all right, Antonio_?”    

And Tony can’t answer that. Not right now. “Yes.” He swallows hard, nodding to the receiver, know he has never been any good at lying. “Yes, I am -- I’m okay.”   

Whitehall is skeptical, of course, but he will let the matter go. “ _If you need anything, do call me. Yes_?”

“Yes.” _No_. Tony doesn’t want help. He wants to turn back time. “Of course.”

He cannot get off the phone fast enough.

Jefa headbutts him, insistent. Tony strokes the supple arch of her back, cards his fingers through her fur, muttering curses to himself.

A knock -- two sharp raps against the door.

Adam? But no, Adam has a key.

Jefa squirms, yowling her unhappiness when Tony scoops her up, tucks her under his arm to raise himself up on tip-toe and peer through the door’s peephole.

It is Kaitlin, armed with a sympathetic look, a spare key, and the garment bag from Tony’s office with his spare suit. “Oh, Tony.” There is so much kindness in her plum-dark eyes and she is so steady, wrapping her free arm around him in a quick embrace.

Tony lets her hold him, squeezes her tight and lets himself be exhausted -- broken-hearted -- for just a moment.

“I talked to James,” she informs him, looking Tony up and down. And what a wreck he must be, damp and swollen-eyed and wearing borrowed clothes. “He’s put your name on 649, down the hall. Housekeeping just finished with it.”

Tony’s head spins. “That was efficient.”

“They did a rush on it.” And Kaitlin swans her way into Adam’s suite like she owns the place, tossing a grin to Tony over her shoulder. “For some ungodly reason, your staff love you.”

“And you?”

She dumps his meager belongings on the bed, reassuring in her teasing, her efficiency.

“I don’t like you one bit.” Kaitlin tickles the soft spot between Jefa’s ears, her eyes sparkling. “I’ve brought your suit, the kit bag from your desk, and a spare master room key.”

“You are a _saint_.” Tony has never loved his second-in-command more for her brusque friendship and teasing.

With a toss of her hair, Kaitlin proclaims smugly “I know.” And then, just a little bit gentle, she asks “you need anything, boss?”

He shakes his head. “No. Thank you, Kaitlin.”

She purses her lips, reaching up to rake the mess of wet hair off his forehead. Not quite tender, but fond still. “I left Yanna in charge of the floor -- she’s good, but I shouldn’t leave her alone too long.”

“No,” Tony agrees, shooing her off. “Go. We have only just started to get back on our feet, make sure my restaurant does not fall to shambles.”

And Tony will have to make sure that he himself does not fall to shambles too.

He fails spectacularly.

Everything in suite 649 is immaculate -- the perfectly folded bath towels, the squared-off corners of the bed. He lets Jefa down to explore their new quarters, so dreadfully pristine.

Tony sits on the edge of the bed, rumples the sheets. He feels like a ghost in this place, a stranger -- he wants to go home. But there is no such thing anymore and he is sick with grief.

There is nothing to catch him and he drowns.    

He does not know how much time passes. Has it been a few minutes? An hour? Days -- since he woke up to klaxon alarms and the dark haze of smoke?    

The vodka is a slurry in his blood -- it blurs his mind, smears his thoughts and dulls his senses until he no longer smells the smoke. Leaves him queasy and churning and eaten-up inside.    

“Tony?” Adam's voice at the door, knocking. Tony does not want to face him. “Hey, Tony, open up.”    

But because it is Adam and because Tony is already shattered, the door opens and Adam has never seen such a dreadful sight.

Bleary-eyed, scrubbing at a few stray tears, Tony frowns up at him. In Adam's borrowed pajamas he is dreadfully small, vulnerable, clutching a clear bottle of _something_ in his long fingers.    

And he is very, very drunk.    

“Ah, fuck.” Adam sighs, heart clenching at the sight of him. Tony with his cherubic face pink and glowering. “Found the minibar, huh?”    

“What do you want?” Tony doesn’t have the patience or heart for this now. His breath hitches dangerously.    

Adam holds up the tray, a peace offering. “Brought you food.” It is nothing fancy, thrown together after service, but -- with everything that has happened -- he knows the last thing Tony will have thought of is food. “You hungry?”    

Tony shakes his head.    

“Better eat something,” Adam insists, crystal-eyed and cajoling as he bulldozes his way into the suite. “Nothing worse than the hangover you’ll have after drinking on an empty stomach.”    

And the wounds are too raw, stinging with too much vodka and Adam Jones has no right to be lecturing him -- “You would know about that, wouldn’t you?” Tony snarls.    

“Yeah.” Adam hums, nonchalant. “I would.” He sets down the tray, crouches to pet Jefa who has decided that his leg is perfect for climbing. “Look, I don’t blame you one bit -- if ever there was a night to get shiftaced, this is probably it. But a raging headache tomorrow morning sure isn't gonna make things any better. Like you said, I'd be the one to know.”

He reaches for the bottle and Tony, -- sluggish, miserable -- shrugs him off.

There is too much understanding in his eyes when Adam folds his arms, looking Tony steadily up and down. “You always were a sulky drunk.” And in one quick motion, he plucks the bottle from Tony’s loose fingers, drops it into the wastebasket. It is not the only bottle there.

“Bastard.”

“Sometimes,” Adam concedes. He reaches again to draw Tony into his arms, folding him close even as Tony fights, stubborn and resistant and unwilling to be comforted. “C'mere.”

Wretched, close to tears, Tony cannot help but soften with Adam's fingers stroking through his hair, his heartbeat slow and soothing against Tony's ear. And he doesn't understand, cannot cope with Adam's gentle offerings. “Why are you doing this?”

“What?”

“Being _kind_.”

“I dunno.” There are many reasons, if Adam thinks about it long enough. “Maybe because you're my friend?” He drags his thumb over the swell of Tony's cheekbone, catching the stray tears there. “Because you took me in when anyone else would have told me to go to hell and now you've been dealt an absolutely shit hand and I want to return the favor?”

And whatever last scraps of strength Tony has clung to finally give way. He sobs -- buries his face in Adam's chest and gives himself over to the grief, the terrified shrill of adrenaline that scatters along his nerve endings, the sickness and misery of too much vodka and too little sense of just how he is supposed to recover from this.

Adam holds him.


	3. Chapter 3

For just a moment too long, bleary-eyed and hungover with his temples throbbing, Tony does not remember. The bed sheets are unfamiliar, the four walls of his room foreign, and -- briefly -- he is not sure why.

Jefa chirps.

The fire alarm. Sirens wailing. The corridors too hot. Jefa squirming, tucked inside his shirt. And the smoke -- white ash drifting like the first snowfall.

He would sink back beneath the bed covers if he could. Draw the blankets up over his head and pretend it is still all right, push away the memory. But the bedside clock is accusing -- nearly  _ noon  _ \-- and there is work to be done.

There is a pause when he pushes open the kitchen doors. Just a half-second where everyone stills, and there are a dozen pairs of eyes asking silent questions, gentle with unasked for and unwanted sympathy and Tony chafes at all of it.

“What?” His voice is brittle, snapping dangerously in the silence.  _ It does not matter, it does not exist beyond these four walls, don’t look at me  _ please. “All of you standing around looking at what? You have jobs to do, get back to work!”

He waves his hands and the spell is broken. Everyone scatters.

Adam doesn’t say a word, but Tony can feel the weight of those terribly knowing blue eyes on him as he passes. The burn of the vodka sitting on his empty stomach. Adam’s t-shirt damp, twisted in the clutch of his fingers. How mortifying.

“What is he doing?” There is no great love lost between Kaitlin O’Donoghue and the Langham’s head chef, but she leans across the pass to pin him with a dark stare. They are, at least, united in this -- in Tony. “Is he really working? He doesn’t need to be down here -- I told him we could handle it.”

“Trust me,” Adam crouches, gets himself at eye-level with the dish before him to make sure the garnish goes on  _ just _ right. “It’s not about whether he thinks you can handle it. He’s just like that.”

“Stubborn?”

“ _ Neurotic _ .”

That earns the faintest of smiles, tugging at the corners of her lips. Kaitlin softens. “I suppose right now he has the right to be.”

“He’s tougher than he looks.”

Little Tony. Twenty-something and already so self-assured, brimming with spitfire and brightness -- thirty-something now and his spine is still made of iron. 

“How long did you know Tony?” Kaitlin purses her lips, measures the weight of her question. “In Paris?”

Adam pushes the finished plates across the pass to Gemma. “Service.” He shrugs when she has turned on her heel and slipped out into the dining room. “Few years?” Forever, really. A lifetime. “Why?”

“He mentioned you a few times -- before you ever showed up here.” She is reticent, unwilling to admit all that she understands. “And, when you ran off to see to him after the fire, it just seems like there’s a good bit of history between the two of you.”

For all that Kaitlin sees, she still doesn’t know the half of it really.

“Something like that,” Adam agrees. Nonchalant.

“I wouldn’t ask” Kaitlin starts, hesitating beneath his level stare. “And I shouldn’t really, ‘cause he is my boss, but -- talk to him? I don’t know that he’s the type to have all that many friends. And, christ knows why, but I think he’d listen to you.”

Adam cannot blame her for her concern. He worries too, privately -- Tony will crunch himself up, press it all down inside himself and the pain of it will eat away at him from the inside until he implodes. Adam  _ knows _ him.

But, they are in the middle of the afternoon rush and he cannot tear himself away. By the time he finds five minutes to step away from the pass, to talk to Tony, the maitre d’ has already disappeared again.

The next morning, Tony is already in the office; the sun has not even broken over the horizon, and Adam is not sure how to ask, how to offer --  _ talk to me? _

Tony seems held together by threads. The perfect Windsor knot of his tie is ever-so-slightly crooked, a lock of hair hanging in a loose comma across his brow. There are sleepless smudges beneath his eyes, his skin wan.

Adam is no good at fixing broken things.

“How’s the cat?” 

Tony hesitates. “She is… okay.”

“Good.” Adam jerks his chin, a single, awkward nod. Neither one of them is really talking about the sleek grey-and-white tabby. And Tony is lying through his teeth; nothing about him is  _ okay _ . “That’s good. You sure you shouldn’t take the day, keep an eye on her?”

“No.” Tony is quick to squash the notion. “She is fine.”

It is true, at least as far as the cat goes. He had left Jefa dozing in the sunshine that pooled through the bay windows, already having declared herself queen of her new domain.

“Still.” Adam slouches, shoulder braced against the door frame. “It’s a new place, lot of stress…”

“ _ Adam _ .” It is not a shout, not quite. But Tony’s voice is dangerously sharp, held together by threads of rigorously mastered self-control. “Fuck off.”

For once in his life, Adam listens, lifts his hands -- placating -- and backs off, avoids pressing any further at the raw edges of the wounds. “Okay,” he murmurs. “Okay.”

He will leave it be, for now.

When Adam is gone Tony shuffles blindly through the papers on his desk, hands shaking. Budget spreadsheets, staff schedules, a piling-up of endless emails. He doesn’t recognize any of it, doesn’t know how to make meaning out of any of this right now. But, if he thinks too much about anything else -- about the insurance paperwork and the reek of smoke and the  _ loss  _ \-- he will lose the very last thread of control which he grips so tightly.

And it does not get better.

Adam hesitates to broach the subject with Tony again and there is no time to talk properly anyway -- all week the kitchen is a madhouse and they are all tense and uneasy and this whole endeavor might just come apart at the seams.

Tony does not even know where to begin with rebuilding, with attempting to configure his life back into some sort of order. And so, instead, he pours every minute and every ounce of himself into the Langham -- into this thing he and Adam have rebuilt which has just begun, at last, to flourish.

His world is pared down to the hotel suite, to the kitchen and dining room and his office. The sun is a thing filtered through window panes, everything beyond the Langham and Tony’s single-minded focus on the restaurant made into so much white noise.

It cannot continue like this.

The schedule -- made a lifetime ago -- says that it should be his day off. And yet, once again, Tony finds himself in the back office accomplishing absolutely nothing.

He needs put his world back in order. To sort through the shambles.

He needs to not be wearing the same damn suit.

It should be simple. Logistics. This is what he is  _ good _ at. But the moment he takes up pen and paper to consider the task -- he has nothing, needs everything -- the tidal wave of emotion rises up and threatens to consume him all over again.

Threading his fingers into his hair, Tony groans.

“That's not a good sign.” Adam, who has no concept of things like politeness or, god forbid,  _ knocking _ , leans in the doorway with his cool, inscrutable eyes fixed on Tony. “What are you even doing here? You’re off today.”

Exasperated, running high on emotion, Tony doesn’t even know. He gestures uselessly to the computer screen -- the same email unfinished for the past hour. “Just… keeping busy.”

And Adam knows Tony far too well, fixes him with the faintest quirk of an eyebrow, gently accusing. “Tones.”

Tony sighs. “I just…” He purses his lips, shakes his head. There is no putting into words the crushing weight, the tempest of anger and anguish and terror that swells and presses behind his breastbone. “I do not know how to begin -- how to put everything to rights again. Easier to focus on the restaurant.”

Adam could tell him that there is no such thing as putting everything to rights. And he would know. Things never go back to the way they were, really. Foolish to hope otherwise.

But Adam also knows that now is not the time for cynicism, for reminding Tony of the cruelties of the world -- Tony who is  _ good _ , who does not deserve to look so hollowed-out and hopeless.

“Well.” He circles the desk to hover behind Tony, squeezing his shoulders -- familiar, more reassuring than Tony will ever admit. “Lucky for you, I know a little bit about starting from the basics.” How many times now? Fleeing from his disasters, chasing immortality. Broke and brave, touching down at Charles de Gaulle. Piecing the shards of himself back together in the Louisiana sunshine. Starting over in a new home, new family members already preparing to ship him off somewhere else? 

How little of his life had Adam managed to hold on to?

And there is a whole new kind of sadness in Tony’s eyes now -- Tony, who knows Adam’s past as surely as he knows his own by now.

It is the last thing Adam wants to see. Sympathy. There, he and Tony are the same.

He plucks the pen -- forgotten -- from Tony’s hand, snatching a page of Langham Hotel stationary off the desktop. “Here.” A scribbled list of bullet points. “Essentials.”

Tony accepts the list warily. It is still  _ so much _ . But, seeing it all laid out in Adam’s scrawling hand, at least it starts to seem manageable. “Adam…” his voice is tight, caught at the back of his throat. “Thank you.”

Adam is not interested in his thanks. “When was the last time you left the hotel?”

Tony grimaces, his mouth drawn into a stubborn, silent line. It is answer enough.

“It’s been four days.”

Tony tuts, his eyes sliding away. “I know. I know -- is just…”

“Overwhelming.”

“Yeah.”

“Well,” Adam leans over his shoulder, gives the page of stationary a tap, trying for lightness. “You’ve got your shopping list now, you can take a wander down to Savile Row.”

Tony snorts. Adam really has no idea -- as if he could actually afford Savile Row...

“Don’t make me kick you out of my kitchen.”

And the thing of it is he  _ knows _ Adam would do it too. Tony concedes with a wry, fragile smile. “Very well. After all, I cannot keep wearing your pajamas.” 

No matter how much he would like to.

It is easier this time, to descend the Langham’s steps with a plan. Comforting, even, to move among fellow Londoners who do not spare him a second glance, who know nothing of him and do not care. Kaitlin in kind in her teasing, perfunctory way. Max and Michel offer their apologies. David watches with wide, uncertain eyes. Helene mothers. And Adam… 

Tony does not know what to make of this new Adam Jones who is wiser after three years hard labor in New Orleans, who is so, so capable and speaks so  _ gently _ to him, even when he is telling Tony to fuck off. Adam, a balm for his soul, the shatter-point of his heart. 

Socks. Trousers. Toothbrush. Razor. Tony walks himself through the list with careful deliberation, mentally adds things like proper cat food for Jefa and crosses each bullet point off with a small glimmer of triumph.

It is so little -- a few shirts, a pair of oxfords, three pairs of trousers, pajamas -- but it is  _ something _ . Some small attempt to put his world back in order.

Simple armor, the twill button-ups and slacks, when he turns up outside of suite 659 with the freshly laundered pajamas that no longer smell like Adam.

And, no matter how many times Adam has told him  _ you can let yourself in _ , Tony still finds himself knocking on the door, ignoring the master key in his breast pocket.

“Hey.” Adam, silhouetted in the open doorway, is shirtless, golden and damp and fresh from the shower. Tony nearly swallows his own tongue. “Everything all right?”

Shaking himself, Tony holds out the folded pajamas, awkward and stupefied. “Sorry, I -- I thought I should return these.” He flushes, embarrassed. The whole thing is a catastrophe, Adam half-naked and Tony still so deeply in love with him, his world shaken up and left in shambles.  “Thank you,” he manages. “Again.”

Adam retreats into the suite, beckons for Tony to follow. “You keep ‘em for now.” He searches through the tumble of clothes vomiting across the bed, lighting on a clean shirt. “You can give ‘em back when you’ve got everything sorted again.”

“Are you sure?” Tony hesitates. “Your wardrobe is not so extensive either…”

Adam waves him off. His wardrobe is four shirts and two pairs of jeans crammed in a kit bag, but who’s counting really? “ _ Tony _ . Keep the damn pajamas.”

Tony turns an even brighter shade of pink, chastened. “Okay.” The clothes are worn-soft in his hands and -- unconsciously, uncertain as to what is supposed to happen next -- Tony fondles the thin cotton in his slender fingers. Straightens the already perfect folds, brushes away imaginary lint, lips pursed.

And Adam is staring. Watching Tony with that curious, piercing look in his eyes that he does not remember from Paris. The look that seems to  _ know _ Tony inside and out. It makes him squirm.

“Let’s take a walk.”

Tony blinks. “What?”

“Lunch service doesn’t start for two hours” Adam proclaims, his mind made up. “We’re going for coffee. Grab your coat.”

Hurricane Adam. All Tony can do is let himself be swept up in the wake -- out of the suite, down the hall to grab his coat. Jefa yowls at him from the bed, complaining that he will not let her out of the suite to explore the rest of the Langham.

“Complain all you like,” Tony admonishes her while Adam scratches between the cat’s twitching ears. “You do not have the run of this hotel,  _ gatito _ .” 

Jefa rumbles a dismissive noise, decides Adam is her new favorite.

“It is unusual,” Tony tells him in the corridor, waiting for the elevator. “She does not take so quickly to new people. But she likes you.” 

Adam grins. “What can I say? I’m likable.”

Tony does not dignify that with a response, unwilling to reveal too much of himself in agreeing.


	4. Chapter 4

The coffee shop is just down the block from the hotel; a crowded, sleekly modern independent place that feels so very like Tony. Adam watches the way the tension eases from the line of his spine, Tony resettling himself in his skin.

When they step up to the counter, the barista -- a twenty-something with over-large glasses and ink from wrist to elbow -- favors Tony with a bright smile and rattles off his order from memory. Something weird and complicated with almond milk, chai, and a disconcerting number of espresso shots.

Adam laughs. But it is reassuring, somehow -- the fact that Tony is so intrinsically tied to this corner of London that he can be a regular in a coffee shop, that they know his order on sight. That Tony, fastidious in all things, would be so particular about how he takes his coffee.

“Nothing fancy for me,” Adam tells the barista. “Just regular coffee. Black.”

The barista nods, punches in their orders. “Haven’t seen you around in a while -- been doing all right?” And Adam, standing behind Tony’s shoulder, wants to scream, to tell the barista to  _ shut up _ because the last thing Tony Balerdi has been over the past week is ‘all right’.

For his part, Tony just purses his lips, tilts his head from side-to-side. “I cannot complain.”

But he could. Adam thinks he has every right to complain, to rail at the world and the unfairness of it all, but this is  _ Tony _ . As long as Adam has known him, it has been his way to grin and bear it. To suffer in silence, until he can’t.

Tony is tough as hell -- more than anyone ever gives him credit for -- and he will be all right. All the same, Adam gives his elbow a reassuring squeeze and digs into his back pocket to pay for their overpriced coffees.

“You don’t have to --”

Adam shuts down the protest with a look. “My treat.” 

For once, Tony does not argue. 

“Thank you.” 

Adam barely hears him above the hiss of the milk steamer, the heady whirr of coffee beans being ground. He nudges Tony with his shoulder. “Don’t mention it.”

Thus caffeinated, they wander shoulder-to-shoulder in the sunshine and Tony -- forever acquiescing to Adam’s whims -- lets himself be led along Margaret Street into the Cavendish Square Gardens.

When Tony looks out across the green lawns, the scattering of statuary, Adam takes the moment to study him; coffee, a change of clothes, the application of the soft sunshine filtering through the cloud cover -- it all seems to do Tony a world of good. He looks like himself again, less knotted up with stress, the faint, crooked smiles more at ease on his face.

Neither one of them feels the need to say much, the silence comfortable and companionable. But Adam is still curious, still concerned, and he has to ruin the whole damn thing by opening his big mouth. “You tell your father what happened?” 

He knows the answer before he even asks; can’t imagine that Tony would be in such straits, such utter disrepair, if the Balerdi patriarch knew what had occurred at the Bourdon Street building. Still, he wants to hear it from  _ Tony  _ \-- wants to understand.

Tony shrugs. “His good days are few -- I am lucky when he remembers me.” The wistful sadness has crept its way back into his voice. “There is no point in making him worry.”

“Jesus, Tony.”

Adam doesn’t know what else he can say.

Beside him, Tony starts to fold back into himself, heavy-hearted. “It is what it is.”

“And what it is,” Adam supplies, squinting up at the distilled sunlight through the tree branches “is fucking miserable.”

“Yeah.”

There is nothing else to say.

Tony ducks his head, sips his coffee so he will not have to break the awkward, heavy silence that descends over the pair of them. It cannot continue like this. He cannot let himself wallow, stagnate -- he lets his gaze wander along the periphery of the gardens, over the facades of the old buildings. He has risked a few forays onto the internet, browsing for apartments, clicking through slick, sprawling flats, rooms the size of postage stamps…

“Is ridiculous.” The proclamation snaps in the silence between them, and he kicks the dirt as they walk. Furious. Frustrated. So, so exhausted. “Everything in this city is so fucking expensive. I was lucky, finding that flat when I did -- could just afford the payments. Now? Even with the insurance payout, I don’t know how I will be so lucky again.”

Adam bins his empty coffee cup, wants to reach for Tony, to offer some sort of reassurance. Comfort. But the world is a wretched, unfair place, and there is nothing he can say to make it any easier.

“Even -- I mean, your father…” A fraught subject, Adam does not know how to broach the question. Realizes how little he really knows about Tony’s history, his family. “Isn’t there a trust or something? A loan, maybe?”

Tony blows a raspberry, waving away the notion. “To free up money from my family’s assets would be a nightmare in and of itself. Everything has gone into the hotels, the restaurant…”

And he will not take a cent away from the miracle they are building, will not risk  _ Adam Jones at the Langham _ for this.

Adam sighs, rakes his hand through his hair. “I get it.”

They circle Cavendish Square, wandering slowly back in the direction of the hotel. And Tony does not quite know how to form the words and Adam does not know why it all  _ matters _ so much to him now. 

It isn’t until they are on the Langham’s front step that Tony stutters to a stop, turns to face Adam with shining eyes. “ _ Thank you _ .” It bursts out of him, grateful and vulnerable in his earnestness. “For this, for  _ helping _ \-- everyone means well, but all of the sympathetic looks and the platitudes, they are exhausting. You…” He has to swallow hard around the rise of emotion that lodges at the base of his throat, struggling to look Adam in the eye. “You do not treat me like I am made of glass now, or like I am crazy.”

“Tony --”

“It is not something I would have expected from you.” And, as quick as it had come, the tender-edged uncertainty is gone from Tony, replaced by a smirk. “This kindness.”

Adam snorts, gives Tony a gentle shove -- and is gratified by one of his increasingly rare grins, all sparkling eyes and silent laughter.

It is so good to see him smile.

“Look,” Adam pauses on the steps, jogs back down the stairs to meet Tony on the sidewalk. “I’ve seen my share of shit -- most of it self-made -- but, I get it. Needing someone to help you feel sane when the world’s flipped the wrong way up.” And it feels strange, to say it. Like a confession, somehow. “And you were there for a lot of that shit; you were a good friend when I sure as hell didn’t deserve one. Least I can do is help you keep your head above water now.”

Something squirms inside Tony at that; an unhappy niggling at the thought that it is all a debt that is owed. That it only matters -- that  _ he _ only matters -- because Adam is doing penance, dealing in repayment of nothing more than friendship.

He is quick to change the subject. “We had discussed expanding the dessert menu, yes? Raspberries are in season, so are pomegranates, strawberries…” And there is the nervous tic, back again, Tony scratching at the tip of his nose. “Maybe something with this? A fruit tart deconstruction?”

Adam lets him lead them away from the fraught discussion, following Tony through the Langham’s swinging doors. “I’ve got some ideas.”

And it is easy to be drawn into discussions like this with Tony, debating the merits of different additions to the menu, throwing ideas back and forth. He can rework a recipe with Max, can argue with Helene, can experiment with Michel -- but Tony is always a fresh perspective, thoughtful, curious.

But Adam is not quite able to let go of their earlier conversation, of the tight frustration around Tony’s eyes as he had spoken about searching for a flat, about the absurd expense of a life in London.

The moment he pushes open the kitchen doors, the wave of noise and organized chaos rises up to envelop them. Something has been burned and Michel is walking David through the finer points of prep for tonight’s menu, Max and Helene tossing jokes back and forth across the counters, the _commis_ ducking around them all, hurrying about their tasks.

“Where have you been?” Max asks at Adam’s elbow, offering the pan of seared scallions for his inspection.

“What’s it matter?” Adam spoons the scallions in a careful pile onto the plate.

“You’re late.”

Adam shoots him a warning look. 

He lets himself sink into the rhythms of it, adding garnishes and double-checking the plates as orders begin to move through their kitchen, aware of Tony on the periphery, circling back and forth between kitchen and dining room.

There is an idea unfolding at the back of his mind, slowly taking form amid the plate-checks and monitoring his team, a vague notion of a thing that has him pushing the plates toward Tony, asking “you think about looking for a roommate?”

Tony’s answer is a quiet harrumph, his mouth ironed into a thin line as he turns on his heel, carries the dishes out in each hand before they can go cold.

The thought begins to form itself into a thing with words -- an offering, a proposal.

“There are a few listings,” Tony informs Adam when he reappears, lingering at the pass as the next round of orders coalesces. “With a roommate it could be feasible. But…” He purses his lips, cants his head from side to side, looking for the right words. “Not so easy, finding a roommate when you are a thirty-four-year-old gay man with a cat.”

“Hm.” Adam glances up from the pass, his eyes crinkled with amusement. “Service.”

Tony is already lifting the dishes -- perfectly level, no fingerprints, spine straight and graceful as ever -- disappearing through the swinging doors again. 

It is such a simple solution.

“What about me?”

The question stops Tony short. “What  _ about _ you?”

“Roommates.” Bent over the pass, eye level with each plate to inspect for any flaws in the cuts of turbot, Adam is not particularly articulate. He straightens, pins Tony with an inscrutable stare. “We could move in together.”

Tony gapes at him, unable to form even a single word. His thoughts have turned to white noise -- static -- reduced to incoherent nonsense.  _ We could move in together _ . And -- “oh no.” His leaden tongue manages to form a protest, shaking his head. “No, no -- I do not think… That is not a good idea.”

To share a flat with Adam -- to be so intertwined in a shared, personal space and to know… to love him… 

It would kill Tony, he is sure of it.

“Why not?” The more Adam turns the idea over in his mind, the more he finds himself warming to it. They bitch one another out and drive each other crazy, but he  _ likes _ Tony. “I mean, it’s not like we’re gettin’ married or anything, just living together. Like Paris.”

Tony acquiesces to Kaitlin, trying to squeeze around him to gather up the waiting orders, opening his mouth to argue and… he had almost forgotten Paris.

He had been between leases. Adam’s roommate -- one of the longer-lasting girlfriends -- had packed up and moved out and he hadn’t been able to make rent on his own. Adam, twenty-six and golden and gorgeous. Tony, just pushing twenty-two and so hopelessly in love already. Two months living together, brushing elbows in the minuscule, claptrap flat before the drinking and the drug habit. Before it had all become too terrible.

The thought makes Tony soften. “Paris was not all bad, was it?”

What little Adam remembers -- the precious rosy years before the benders and the blackouts -- hadn’t seemed so bad at all. “Nah,” he agrees. “Not so bad. And it wouldn’t have to be forever.” He pushes the finished set of plates across to Tony. “Here, take these out before they get cold waiting on your servers.”

Tony considers the notion as he serves the warm plates to the couple dining at table twelve, his responses automatic, wrapped up in his own mind. Perhaps…

Perhaps.

It might not be so bad.

“Look, we spend all our time here anyway,” Adam persists, waving his hand to encompass the Langham. “We get an apartment together, I don’t know about you, but it’s basically just a place that isn’t a hotel suite for me to hang my clothes, brush my teeth, and catch a few hours of sleep.”

“I don’t know…” But of course, deep inside himself, Tony knows already that he will say ‘yes’.

“Just think about it.”

Tony spends the rest of the evening thinking of little else.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Jake for being better at the words than me <3

“Okay.” Two days later and Tony has resolved himself to the idea, steels his nerves when he approaches Adam in the lull between morning and noon service. “Okay,” he says again, nodding. “It is worth it at least to look.”

And so, they find themselves a realtor.

Adam perches on the edge of the desk while Tony makes the call, listening intently as his eyes wander the small enclosure of the office. The bursting file cabinet and stacks of papers, the half-wilted sweet pea plant struggling for life on Tony’s desk. Tony -- ever the manager, firm and in charge and still endlessly polite with the telephone receiver cradled against his ear.

“Two bedrooms, yes.” The confirmation is emphatic, Tony glancing unconsciously up at Adam. “And a proper kitchen space.”

There is some discussion over the phone -- Tony nodding and offering numbers -- and Adam is content to sit back and watch. He has no head for numbers; Tony has done the math, run through the budgets, and Adam had shrugged and nodded at the breakdown of prices they might afford between their combined salaries. London, Adam finds himself reflecting idly, is expensive as hell.

“Perfect, thank you.” Perfunctory and polite, Tony hangs up with a click. “An appointment this Thursday, three o’clock,” he informs Adam as the hum of anxiety starts again in the hollow of his chest. “Hopefully we will find something to suit our purposes.”

Adam hops off the desk, there are scones baking that require his attention. “Sounds good,” he hums. “That’ll be after the worst of the lunch rush, Michel and Kaitlin will be able to handle service on their own.”

For a long moment Tony is silent, studying him. Adam can almost see the gears turning behind his keen, honey-brown eyes. “You are still certain you want to do this?”    

“Yeah, I’m sure.” Adam has turned the idea over and over in his mind and he really cannot see how it could go wrong. For all that they might seem like polar opposites, there is something about it -- Adam and Tony -- that just works. It is what will make the Langham such a success. There is an understanding between them, a familiarity. Adam likes Tony, and more than that, he _trusts_ him. “Why, you having second thoughts?”

“No. No, I just…” Tony hesitates. There are so many levels of fear and doubt to comb through before he can put it into words. “What if this does not work? If we do not get along…?”

Adam squeezes his shoulder. “Tones, I’ve known you forever. Trust me, unless you’re hiding something _really_ weird, we’ll get on just fine.”

And Tony has to squash the terrible pang of guilt that rattles his rib bones, makes him ache, because he is hiding. Adam doesn’t know -- _cannot_ know -- that Tony is still so stupidly, foolishly in love with him.

“You never know,” Tony shrugs, trying for levity. The lies, the falsely casual cheer, cut his tongue like shards of glass. “Perhaps I am secretly an axe murderer and you have simply never noticed.”

That earns a laugh from Adam, startled and brilliant. “Nah,” he says, eyes gleaming. “You aren’t scary enough to be an axe murderer.”

Arching an eyebrow, Tony leans into the farce. “You do not think I am scary?”

Adam’s mind conjures up Tony, fierce and furious, red in the face and shouting in hoarse, scathing Spanish. The few times he has reduced members of their staff to tears. “Well…”

Tony cannot help but grin -- even this, this little bit of affection, simple friendliness is more than he could ask for. “Get out of here,” he laughs, flapping his hands to shoo Adam away. “There are pastries waiting for your attention. Go.”

He finds it hard to let go of the image of Adam, the lines at the corners of his eyes crinkled with mirth, his smile broad and wicked.

Their meeting with the realtor, two days later, does nothing to help Tony in his silent, secret anguish.

Within minutes of stepping into Nora Greene’s polished, minimalist office Tony is acutely aware of the way she appraises both of them -- Adam swaggering, charismatic in his beat-up leather jacket and blue jeans, and Tony in one of his three rotations of slacks and button-down. Immediately, Nora seems to decide that Adam is the one to talk to and concentrates her winning smile on him.

“Mr. Jones, Mr. Balerdi -- a pleasure.” She extends a hand to each of them in turn, her grip lingering a moment too long in Adam’s.

“Adam, thanks.”

It is unusual, Tony thinks, to see Adam politely rebuffing the subtle flirting. _No more_ _women_ , he had said. And apparently, he had meant it.

“Just Tony.”

They sit.

“Well Adam, Tony, I do think I’ve found a few options that might suit your needs.” Nora spreads her hands over a stack of manila envelopes to illustrate. And all at once the willingness to flirt with Adam swings suddenly far, far in the opposite direction. “That being said, I did want to ask -- are we looking for family-friendly space? If children are a future plan, then that’s something you’d want to consider now --”

“ _No_ ” Tony says, too urgent. Terrified, as though Nora Greene can somehow see the longing in him. “No, there are no -- we are not…”

He wishes though.

“Just roommates,” Adam picks up the end of Tony’s protest as he flounders. “Friends.”

“ _Oh_.” Nora blinks, then, just a subtle flicker of surprise. “Oh, I apologize, I didn’t mean to assume…”

And Tony has clearly done something to anger the universe because none of this is even the slightest bit fair. He shrugs it off, shrinking slightly in the low office chair. “No harm done.” It doesn’t matter. The only thing that does is the stack of files on her desk -- the possibility that one of these might be their new home.

Recovering gracefully, Nora leans across the desk to spread out the first four listings, indicating each with a tap of her finger as she details pros and cons and price ranges.

Adam shifts on the edge of his seat, pressing closer to Tony as they pore over the photographs and summaries. Idly, the back of his hand brushes along the bare inches of Tony’s wrist. It startles Tony, shocks him like a bolt of electricity -- all thrills and racing heartbeat even though he _knows_ it does not mean a thing.

And, to make it all just that much worse, there is not a single good option among the parade of listings.

There is the studio flat with a decent-sized kitchen and beautiful hardwood floors, but not a square inch of privacy.

A single bedroom in Covent Garden with a beautiful walk-out balcony.

The building that does not allow pets.

“Won’t work,” Adam vetoes it before Tony can even open his mouth. “Got a cat.” There is a furrow of unease between his eyebrows, something malcontented and considering. Is he thinking what Tony is? That there is no point in attempting any of this?

A two bedroom with a space barely deserving of the term ‘kitchenette’.

Another flat, near perfect, but too far out of their price range to be practical.

“What about this one?” Adam passes a file over to Tony. And, it is promising, a sturdy little cinderblock of a flat with two bedrooms and the full kitchen space as requested, but…

“It is on the fifteenth floor.” Tony’s voice is small, colored with a deep embarrassment.

“Yeah? What about it?”

Tony, flushed, stares blindly at the file in his white-knuckled grip, smelling smoke. “The ladders. On a fire engine.” He is so very aware of them both -- Adam and Nora -- and the weight of their stares. “Many of the ladders do not reach above the tenth floor.”

“ _Tony_.” Adam’s voice is so painfully soft. He shakes his head. Words are too much right now.       

“Give us a minute” Adam says, apologetic.

And it should be Tony who is apologizing, but he is being lifted from the chair and Nora is telling Adam where the restroom is and it is only Adam’s fingers curled around his bicep that hold Tony together as he stumbles down the hall.

“You’re okay.” He is not. Tony is not okay -- none of this is okay. But Adam is turning the lock on the door and fumbling Tony into his arms and he whispers it over and over against the softness of Tony’s hair. “You’re okay. You’re okay.”

“I shouldn’t…” The breath shudders in Tony’s lungs and he is not going to cry. He will not break down in some office toilet. “I…”

“Stop talking.” Adam squeezes him tighter, leans his back against the tile that bleeds a slow chill through his leather jacket. “Just breathe, Tony.”    

He does. Manages slow, deep breaths in time with the pass of Adam’s knuckles up and down the ridges of his spine. And he should not be falling apart like this, should not be so damnably _fragile_ , but Adam tells him over and over again that everything is all right and Tony has no choice but to hold on to the lifeline that he offers.

Adam strokes his hair -- gentle patient, never traits that one would ever ascribe to Adam Jones -- and feels the jackhammering of Tony’s heart start to slow. “Better?”

There is not really a ‘better’ so much as there are varying degrees of ‘worse’. Tony decides he is as close to all right as he will ever be, peels himself away from Adam and the mess of dark tear stains on the front of his shirt.

“I’m sorry.” His voice is rough, unsteady. “I am being ridiculous, I --”    

“Tony, what would be ridiculous is me saying I don’t wanna live in a place with hardwood floors ‘cause I’m scared I’ll get a splinter.” Adam holds him by the shoulders, keeps Tony pinned in place with the force of his insistent, bright blue eyes. “Look at me, okay? You’re _smart_. You’re the most rational person I know-- and you’ve been through hell these past few weeks and you’d be crazy if it didn’t affect you.”

“But…”

“No ‘but’s,” Adam insists. “We find a place on the tenth floor or below, and we make sure it has a fucking state of the art smoke detector. ‘Kay?”    

He has changed so much. The volatile, self-absorbed Adam Jones is nowhere to be seen now.

“Okay.”

When he is composed, able to breathe a little steadier again, Tony lets Adam guide him back to the office where Nora is waiting. She is kind enough not to pity him, though he wonders what she had thought of his melting down, sparing him only a kind look as she lays out the last three portfolios.    

“I took the liberty of removing a few of the listings,” she tells them matter-of-factly. “Nothing above the tenth floor now.”

One flat, near perfect but over an hour from the restaurant.

Two more within walking distance; one too expensive, the other absurdly cramped.

Tony’s heart sinks, the longer they look. It must be a sign -- some divine power telling them that this should not happen, that it cannot work.

“Well,” Nora says at last, unruffled, sweeping the folders back into their tidy pile. “No need to be discouraged, these things do take time. I’ll keep searching and let you know if I find any more listings that fit your requirements.”

They bid their goodbyes.

Tony is silent in the elevator, not quite willing to look at Adam, to ask his thoughts -- they are back to square one.

On the street, Adam squints up at the rare, brilliant sunshine and asks “how many places you think she showed us?”

“Thirteen.” Tony grimaces.    

Why bother?

“Well, that’s an unlucky number,” Adam says with a shrug as if to say _no wonder._ “So we wait for number fourteen.” He has always been the one with the big ideas, the reassurance that the world will work out in his favor because it always _has_. Maybe Adam is a little more fallible now, will concede to the whole ‘best laid schemes of mice and men’ bit, but he has not lost that willingness to wring every bit of happiness, of success, from life.

If nothing else, Tony still has faith in Adam.

He gets the call about number fourteen a few days later, when he has retreated in the office to finally make headway with the staff schedules he has neglected since the fire in the Bourdon Street building.    

“ _Check your email,_ ” Nora insists. “ _I’ve sent you the listing_.”    

Wary, Tony clicks on the email that she has titled -- in all capitals -- _PERFECT LISTING, RE: BALERDI-JONES._ And, there are no two ways about it, she is right. The longer he looks, clicking through the pictures, the more Tony thinks number fourteen might just be perfect.

“Adam,” he raises his voice to carry out into the kitchen. “Come look at this.”

Covered in a dusting of flour from head to toe, Adam is careful not to stand too close when he circles the desk to peer over Tony’s shoulder at this new listing. Tony spares him a glance, then has to look again, incredulous at the mess Adam has made. 

“What the hell have you been doing?”

Adam shrugs. “Makin’ noodles.”

“If you track flour all over the carpet, I will kill you,” Tony informs him solemnly, swiveling back to the monitor. “Or housekeeping will. Now, look at this.”

He pulls up the listing, lets Adam read over the details. Queues up the first of the photographs.    

“God, that’s _fantastic_.” Adam makes appreciative noises as Tony clicks on the pictures, one-by-one. “Look at the size of that kitchen, and the view --”    

“I know, I know.” Tony is quiet, as though if he dares to speak too loudly the universe will hear him -- will dash his hopes to pieces. “We have a showing tomorrow morning. Early.”    

Unthinking, thrilled at the prospect, Adam squeezes Tony’s shoulder and disappears back into the early morning hum of the kitchen.    

It isn’t until much later that Tony realizes he is sporting a ghostly white handprint.    

The flat, near Bedford Square, is only a fifteen minute walk from the hotel. Nora is waiting for them on the street, portfolio balanced on her hip and clearly pleased with herself. She smiles broadly at the sight of them and says, conspiratorially “I really think you’re going to love this one.”    

The building itself is lovely, comfortable; an old facade with a cleanly refurbished interior -- nothing too strikingly modern, none of the sterile minimalism they both loathe. The key jangles in Nora’s hand as the elevator rises toward the seventh floor, and Tony is so, so hopeful.

Room 724.    

Nora stops outside the door, fits the key into the latch as she briefs them. “It’s not particularly spacious -- not like some of the open floor plans I showed you -- but you’ve got the two bedrooms, a shared bathroom and common area, and a truly spectacular kitchen space.”

She guides them inside with a sweep of her hand, and…

It is so perfect Tony staggers, swaying on his feet.    

Adam is drawn immediately to the wide open kitchen space, the gleaming-new chrome appliances. He pokes his head into every nook and cranny, exploring the closets, the bathroom, each modest bedroom -- everything in soft shades of cream and sand. Dazed, Tony lingers in each space, in the bright squares of sunlight that spill through the large windows, in the bedrooms with their soft carpet, the kitchen, the comfortable expanse of the living room.

A new home -- rebuilding. Some sort of life, built together with Adam who he has loved so quietly and so deeply. Is Tony capable of it? He is not sure he has the strength for it, and yet he cannot live forever out of the hotel suite. Cannot allow himself to stagnate.    

“What are you thinking?” Adam studies him, silhouetted in the outline of the large bay windows. He thinks he already knows.

Reticent, Tony hugs himself, looking out across the cityscape. “I am not sure I should say what it is I’m thinking.”

“Don’t want to jinx it?”

“Something like that.”    

Silent, each wrapped up in their own hopes and ideas -- immersed in the potential of the space -- they wonder the same thing: will this work?    

And, turning to Adam, Tony asks “what are _you_ thinking?”  

He almost wants Adam to say he hates it, that he doesn’t want to move in, that he's changed his mind and wants nothing to do with Tony Balerdi -- it might be less painful that way. Like ripping off a bandage, instead of this slow death while Adam treats him with such strange, terrible kindness.    

But Adam -- reckless, brilliant Adam -- looks him in the eye and says “I’m thinking ‘where do we sign?’”

Three days later, the flat is theirs


	6. Chapter 6

Furnishing the flat becomes a whole new challenge, one that Tony has not even considered. 

Adam -- having spent the past several years more or less nomadic, migrating between available hotel rooms -- does not have much to his name. And, in their current predicament, Tony has even less.

He hardly knows where to begin.  It is so very much to try to cope with.

Kaitlin is the one who catches him, this time, in the office with his head in his hands and seemingly endless displays of online furniture catalogs on the computer’s screen.

“Tony.” She purses her lips at the sight of him, fond and sympathetic and prepared to kick him out of the office herself if it comes down to it. “You hardly took five minutes rest after everything.” She is careful not to say  _ after the fire. _ “Now, I’ve seen the timecards, I know you’ve got the vacation time -- just take a few days and get your world in order.”

“There is work to do.” Tony shakes his head. Whatever his personal situation, the Langham will not falter. “We are taking so many bookings, the word is starting to get out…”

“Boss.” Her voice is firm, her dark eyes solemn. “I promise I won’t let the restaurant go to pieces in your absence. Just take a week?”

“I can’t.” He still feels too fragile around the edges.

It is so damnably hard to start over. To rebuild. He does not know how Adam has managed to do it.

“You should,” Kaitlin insists. And she is stubborn -- has learned from the best. Folding her arms, she fixes him with a stern, too-knowing look. “The staff are starting to whisper that you’re crazy again.”

Tony puffs a faint almost-laugh. 

“The staff are right,” he informs her coolly. “Now, I have things to do.”

He does not take a week, but Kaitlin manages to strike just the right nerve, and so he allows himself two days. He has done the math, has budgeted and carried the decimal points and figured out how they can make it all work. For now, they need only the essentials -- beds, a table, chairs, towels, pots and pans and flatware. 

And Tony manages. It is what he  _ does _ \-- making order out of the chaos -- but he is so, so aware of Adam in the middle of the equation. So desperate to accommodate, to make certain that everything is perfect. So afraid that Adam will change his mind, will uncover his secrets, will leave like Paris all over again.

The question marks in Adam’s inbox become more numerous, increasingly urgent in tone, and it is clear that Tony is at his wit’s end when Adam finally finds a few spare minutes in which to call him between morning and noon service.

“How goes the interior decorating business?” He paces the length of Tony’s small, cluttered office, and it feels strangely like trespassing to be in this space that is so very  _ Tony _ without the man himself.

“ _ Ha ha, you are very funny _ .” Tony’s voice in his ear is dry, stretched thin with the endless stress of it all. “ _ I do not believe you have no opinions on furniture _ .”

“Believe it.” Adam perches on the edge of the desk, settling in for the debate. “I don’t care what it looks like -- a bed is a bed and a couch is a couch. That simple.”

He can practically  _ hear _ the skeptical arch of Tony’s brow. “ _ You certainly had many opinions during the process of remodeling the dining room _ .”

“I have opinions about food,” Adam concedes. “And the restaurant is food-adjacent. So of course I’m gonna have opinions on that.”

“ _ But you have no opinion on a couch _ .” Exasperated.

Adam grins to himself in the empty office. “My opinion is that a couch is just something to sit on, I don’t care what it looks like.”

“ _ Mhm _ .”

“Tony, I spent three months in New Orleans living out of a Motel 6 that hadn’t seen an update since the early seventies. You bring home some hideous eyesore of a couch, I’m gonna laugh at you, but I’ll still sit on it.”

There is a pause and then “ _ fine _ .” Tony proclaims. “ _ Continue to be unhelpful -- perhaps I will find us a particularly heinous couch just to spite you _ .”

And Adam cannot help the laughter in his voice, the gentle teasing when he says “whatever you like, dear.” He hangs up, misses the way Tony splutters -- dumbstruck -- on the other end of the line.

_ Dear _ .

It takes Tony several minutes before the sound of it -- Adam calling him ‘dear’ with such amused fondness -- ceases to echo painfully in the chambers of his heart.

He sends Adam several pictures after that of bizarre, hyper-modern futons in garish colors and a particularly offensive floral couch that might in a previous life have been squatting an old  _ abuela _ ’s parlor. In the end, he finds a small sofa in tasteful brown microfiber that takes the combined efforts of Adam, Michel, and David grunting and swearing to maneuver through the entryway, onto the elevator, and into their flat.

The beds are easier to maneuver -- packaged in large, flat boxes with some assembly required -- but present a whole new problem entirely. Adam, shuffling dressers and night tables between the rooms with Max’s help, finds Tony cross-legged on the floor, clutching a rubber mallet and surrounded by the shambles of a half-completed bed frame as Kaitlin turns the instructions this way and that in an attempt to decipher them.

“Having fun?” Adam, sweaty, drags the back of one hand across his brow, studying the pair of them. And Adam is not sure if he simply doesn’t have any casual clothes, or if Tony is allergic to anything that isn’t at least business casual, but he sits among the chaos in chinos and a button-down, the sleeves rolled to the elbow. 

Aggrieved, Tony favors him with a grimace. “I think we are missing some pieces.”

“We are  _ not _ ,” Kaitlin insists, scowling at him over the pamphlet of incomprehensible diagrams. “The instructions are just bloody impossible.”

“You built the other one,” Adam reminds them.

Tony raises an eyebrow, clearly skeptical of his own efforts. “And I cannot guarantee that it will not fall apart beneath you.”

Max snorts.

It turns out that David is a man of many talents, however, having cobbled together most of the furniture in the small attic flat he shares with Sara, and a bed frame is not so dissimilar to an Ikea futon. Between the three of them, all the screws and pegs and pieces are accounted for. The beds seeming slightly less likely to collapse.

Jefa has already settled in; her bed in the corner, cat food in the pantry, migrating with the patches of sunlight through the flat. She hisses at Max, hides from David when he offers her his hand, and twines herself around Adam’s ankles every time he tries to move the furniture.

“Watch your tail,” Tony warns her solemnly when she trots up to butt her head against his elbow. “You will be stepped on if you aren’t careful,  _ pequeña _ .”

Adam watches as she winds herself up, leaping lightly onto the window ledge. “No moving out now,” he teases. “Looks like she loves the place.”

She is not the only one.

Their tables and chairs have all been pillaged from the Langham basement -- pieces left over from the remodel. Old, serviceable furniture. And it is sparse, still; their meager wardrobes in the closets, a few groceries stockpiled in the kitchen cabinets, the walls bare. But it is starting to look like it just might be a home. 

“We are taking bets,” Michel informs Adam when everything has been put in its place, arranged and rearranged to their liking, and the Langham crew are sprawled in the living room weary-limbed and drinking champagne from plastic cups. “How long will it be before he kills you and feeds you to the cat. My guess is two weeks.”

Adam laughs, nursing a sweating can of coke. “ _ Hey _ \-- give me at least a month!”

“I wouldn’t push your luck,” Max warns, slouched against the long expanse of the kitchen counter. His tired eyes crinkle with mirth.

It feels different like this. Like they are friends -- boys again in Paris -- teasing and tormenting and easier, somehow, without the adrenaline rush of the kitchen. No screaming or broken dishes or desperate pursuit of perfection.

Adam has forgotten how good it can feel; having friends, living beyond the kitchen.

Kaitlin raises her hand from her spot on the floor, slender legs crossed neatly at the ankle. “I bet three days,” she informs them with a wicked, twinkling smirk.

She does not mention the other bet -- the one quietly circulating among the waitstaff and the  _ commis _ in the kitchen. The one she has subtly discouraged but cannot manage to put entirely to rest.

Adam and Tony -- the executive chef and the maitre d’. The strange love-hate thing that exists between them, built of too much shared history and the fierce respect they have for one another, bordering on adoration.

Are they shagging? How long has it been going on? And, if they aren’t, how long will it take for them to finally give in to the tension -- so thick it could be carved with a butter knife and spread on toast -- and screw one another brainless?

It seems appropriate, in a way, that the conversation finds its way back to Paris. To the good memories and the madness of Jean Luc’s kitchen. The shadows -- addiction, obsession, the final epic series of catastrophes that had sent Adam into exile -- remain unacknowledged, the elephant in the room no one dares linger over.

“You remember that place?” Adam’s eyes are bright, bright blue, gesturing between Max and Michel with his half-empty can of soda. “That dive on Rue Des Panoyaux, the one you two used to always insist we go to -- what was the name of it?”

“ _ Le Saint Sauveur _ .” The name conjures itself from Max’s memory.

“ _ Oui _ .” Michel bares his teeth, grinning. “ _ Le Saint Sauveur. _ ”

“Every night.” Adam has to shake his head at the madness of it, at what lunatics they had all been. Young and hungry and fearless --  _ reckless _ in their own certain immortality. “At what, two in the morning? After doing eighteen hours at Jean Luc’s, knowing we had to be back in the kitchen at seven.”

“Absolutely crazy,” Max agrees. And then, leveling an admonishing finger at David -- wide-eyed and flushed with champagne -- he adds “let it be a lesson for you. We’ve already done the fucking up and lived to learn from it. Do as we say, not as we do.”

David salutes him with an ironic quirk.

Slouching forward with his elbows on his knees, Adam scrubs at the back of his neck. Remembering. “I think I was hungover for two years.” There is a tinge of shame, of guilt, underlying his words.

Tony, tucked into the corner of the sofa, swills the last mouthful of champagne around the bottom of his crinkling plastic cup. “It is a miracle any of you survived.”

“And who was right there with us the whole time?” Max reaches across the space to give him a gentle shove. “Little Antonio Balerdi, almost thirty and they were still checking your ID.”

“But of course,” Tony puffs himself up, aloof and haughty. Adam can see the gleeful warmth of a gentle buzz in the flush of his cheeks, though, the genuine happiness he has not seen in Tony’s eyes for a long, long time. “Someone had to be there to make certain your drunken asses made it home.”

Adam throws his head back and cackles at  _ that _ spectacular twisting of the facts. “Okay,” he laughs. “I know I was a blackout drunk and my memory is a little fuzzy in places, but I definitely remember picking you up out of a gutter more than once. And you always bitched at me for it, too.”

Tony flushes. He remembers well enough; Adam’s warm hands and strong arms and his own clumsy feet stumbling over the cobblestones in the pre-dawn darkness.

“Fucking great times though” Max sighs, shaking his head.

That they had been, Adam will readily agree. Great and terrible times.

Eventually, one by one, everyone is gone; David back to Sara and the cramped, colorful attic. Max, a shadow disappearing down the block in a trail of cigarette smoke when the sound of Michel’s motorbike has not quite faded from the air. Kaitlin, pressing a perfunctory kiss to Tony’s cheek before she goes.

And then it is just Adam and Tony, and Jefa stalking the shadows in their new flat. Suddenly unsure of one another, of what happens now in the silence and the stillness.

Tony clears away the empty cups, makes a mental note to add garbage bags to their seemingly endless list of necessities. Jefa chirps, leaping up onto the kitchen counter to follow him with her yellow, curious eyes, and Tony strokes the slender arch of her back. Finds himself humming, a tuneless rise and fall of melody that shapes itself into  _ La Marseillaise. _

Beyond the soft pitch of his own voice, he is acutely aware of Adam moving through their flat --  _ their _ flat -- of the quiet sounds of life. Of home.

It will all be okay, Tony thinks. And he might just let himself start to believe it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A thank you, as always, to Jake for 1) being wonderful and 2) letting me steal his words. Ich liebe dich, I hope you enjoy this merry band of idiots and their moving shenanigans <3


	7. Chapter 7

Adam should be used to it by now -- waking up in strange bedrooms -- but there is still always the moment of disorientation. The seconds of confusion before memory sets in. Bounced around to different relatives, a hundred different beds from a hundred different one-night stands, hotels and apartments.

He is in the Bedford Square flat and somewhere at the opposite end of their shared space is Tony, and every time Adam shifts his shoulder clicks. An unpleasant reminder; he is getting old.

Grimacing, he hauls himself from the bed, padding on bare silent feet through the flat. Jefa watches him from the back of the couch, flicking her tail.

“Mornin’,” Adam greets her softly, stroking his knuckles over the dome of her skull on his way to test the hot water.

It turns out the only flaw in the shower, with it’s spectacular water pressure and temperature hot enough to boil him alive, is the shower itself. For Tony who is just pushing five-foot-nine, it is not such a terrible issue, but Adam -- six feet and some spare change -- cracks his elbow against the walls more than once, reaching too far.

“You okay?” Tony hesitates to ask, looking Adam warily up and down from the bedroom doorway. He is all fluffy bedhead and sleepy, frowning eyebrows, disgruntled by the effort required to be awake. “Lot of banging and swearing in there.”

Adam towels cooling drips of water from the back of his neck. “Yeah -- tight fit in the shower.” And he can’t resist the subtle jibe, the smirk that curls at the corners of his lips. “You should be all right, though.”

Tony makes an unpleasant noise, shuffling past him.

They are okay.

For the first few days, everything is okay.

They tip-toe around each other, still a little bit uncertain, parsing out the subtle rhythms of life together. Adam, so used to being a stranger in people’s homes, makes himself surprisingly unobtrusive. Even so, Tony is hyper-aware of his presence, of the lingering feeling of  _ Adam _ that echoes in the flat -- the smell of his cologne, a plate abandoned on the counter, footsteps and his low voice murmuring through the walls -- and he cannot relax. Wound tighter and tighter into a knot of nerves and anxiety.

It is exhausting. Adam feels fidgety just looking at him.

“Should we…” Tony hesitates on the third evening, bobbing his steeping tea bag in and out of the hot water. “Do we need to establish rules, do you think?”

“We’re both adults.” Adam shrugs. “I pick up my shit, you pick up your shit. We respect each other’s space, give some warning before bringing anyone home --”

“I thought…” A furrow appears between Tony’s straight eyebrows. “You said no more women, have you --?”

“No.” No, Adam has made his promise, his pledge for redemption, and he is sticking too it. His offering is awkward, oblique. “But you -- if you’re gonna -- I mean, if you want to bring someone home, don’t let me interrupt your love life. Just give me time to make myself scarce.”

And it is almost funny. He is so far off base and so close to the heart of it all at the same time. Tony could laugh. He could cry. It is all terrible.

Embarrassed for a million different reasons, Tony finds himself staring into his teacup, the tips of his ears burning. “You do not need to worry, there is little chance of… well. You know.”

“Oh.” Adam, quiet. “That’s a shame.”

Tony blinks, the frown deepens. “You want me to kick you out of the flat so I can have noisy, raunchy sex with relative strangers I have brought home from the bar?” It is a pointed reminder; their time in Paris, the brief days spent living together and Adam’s seemingly endless string of liaisons breaking Tony’s heart over and over again on the other side of the thin plaster.

Adam is not sure what to think of that particular idea. The notion of tightly-wound, tender-hearted Tony Balerdi wrapped around a one night stand in the next room. There is a wrong note to it. “No, I just -- you deserve to be happy.”

And Tony might just die. 

He tuts, brushing Adam off with a quick jerk of his chin. “Thank you.” But his voice is strained, eyes focused on the shivering surface of tea that has now steeped for far too long. “I am, I suppose, just waiting for the right partner.”

It is the most he will ever say to Adam who will never realize. Who will never love him back.

And Adam smiles.

There has always been something wonderfully old-fashioned about Tony, his notions about relationships and life and sex, that Adam has always enjoyed, even when Tony needles him about his own relationships -- something refreshing and reassuring. The fact that Tony can still be so certain of things like true love.

“Well,” he says. “When you find him, just give me a head’s up and I’ll buy myself some noise-cancelling headphones for the night.”

Somehow, Tony manages to muster a smile for him.

Adam does have a point, though. As it turns out, their walls are thin.

He is a light sleeper, always has been -- one of the holdovers from his disordered upbringing; the need to be awake in an instant, to be constantly aware. His eyes are open in the darkness the moment he hears the first, choked-off cry.

Did he imagine it? The flat is still and silent. Maybe it was Jefa.

But then, again, the sound comes -- a sob. Tony. “ _ No… no, no -- _ ” 

Silence.

The sigh of hinges, quiet footsteps. Muffled, hiccuping sniffles beyond the door.

Adam lays still, staring up at the shadows of the ceiling. Hesitating. The weight of their shared history sits heavy on his chest. They are friends, now. Perhaps. And there is no one else, really, to care for Tony -- to comfort him in the vast, lonely nighttime. There is only Adam, and the little he can offer.

Such an odd thing. A year ago -- two years -- Adam would not have cared so much.

There is a crack of light beneath the bathroom door, just enough to illuminate Jefa sitting vigil in the corridor. Her eyes flash, bright and solemn. Adam offers her a silent nod of reassurance, risks knocking.

“Hey -- Tony?” Adam pitches his voice low. “You, uh, you okay in there?”

Beyond the door, the unmistakable sound of retching; an awful, wrenching sound that makes Adam's own guts clench.

Jefa looks at Adam. Adam looks at Jefa. “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “I’m going.” The toilet flushes. “Tones? I’m comin’ in.”

He nearly trips over him, Tony slumped in a shaky puddle of limbs on the cool tile, sweating through his t-shirt and wracked by sobs muffled against his fist.

“ _ Vete _ .” Tony pleads, barely more than a whisper. Shame-faced. “Adam -- I am begging you, just go away.”

“Can’t do that.” Adam is already bullying his way into the bathroom, wetting one of their brand new flannels under the faucet. He watches as Tony swallows hard, gives a full-bodied shudder. “You gonna throw up again?”

His throat burns, raw with bile and fear. “I don’t know.” And he squeezes his eyes shut, shakes his head. It is too much. Too much for his addled, adrenaline-stupid brain to sort through. Adam is here and he is in his dream and he is alive and he is dead. And Tony is here and he is in the burning flat and he is in Paris and he can’t breathe, can’t breathe, can’t --

Crouching beside him, Adam steadies Tony with one gentle hand between his shoulder blades, laying the cool cloth against the back of his neck. And this is familiar territory for them; the floor, the toilet bowl, the shaky, sweaty misery of it all. But this time it is Tony, trembling and wretched; and Adam finds himself mirroring Tony’s own reassurances, the way he had always been so gentle with Adam -- wretched and sick -- so many years ago.

Eventually, the tremors ease. Tony breathes just a little bit easier. And he shifts, drawing his knees up to his chest like a child. “You can go.”

“I don’t think so.” Adam sits back, his pale eyes taking in the sight of Tony shivering on the bathroom floor, and Tony is sure he can hear him thinking  _ pathetic _ . “Bad food,” Adam hums “or bad dreams?”

“Dreams.” Tony climbs unsteadily to his feet, his blood still churning with the adrenaline spill of panic. In the mirror, he is absolutely haggard. Hollow-eyed and pale, damp hair curling at his temples. He presses his palms hard against the porcelain, grounding.

Adam’s reflection -- kind, solemn -- joins him in the mirror. “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours?”

“It’s nothing. Just dreams.”

“About the fire?”

The fire. Words everyone else has tried to avoid, filled in with ‘the accident’, with ‘what happened’, with awkward silence. Adam is the only one to say it, and somehow the naked truth is less painful than all the euphemisms and the silences. 

Tony nods. “Some of it.”

“And the rest of it?” 

He doesn’t want to say it, to speak it into being. But Adam’s hands are heavy on his shoulders and he says “hey...” and the admission dredges itself up from within Tony, sinks like a stone between them.

“Paris. The rest of it -- it was Paris.”

It is not the answer Adam expects.  _ Paris _ . A subject of his own circling nightmares -- but what claim could the city hold over Tony’s sleeplessness? How could it possibly haunt him the way the old streets and the ripple of the Seine haunted Adam?

For once, Tony looks all of his thirty-four years when he turns to face Adam, crowded up against the bathroom sink. “I am sorry I woke you. I have not -- the nightmares have not been like this for many years.”

“Tony…”

“I would dream -- before, and for some time after.” Tony swallows hard, speaking to the floor. “Something terrible would happen and I would find you, dead and cold. In the kitchen, the back alley, your flat on Rue DaGuerre.”

Adam, with his eyes clouded over. Grey and still and stiff with rigor -- the spark of mad brilliance extinguished. And Tony had watched the death spiral play out in slow motion, had been so  _ terrified  _ that one day when he stormed the little attic flat to drag Adam out of his hangover and into Jean Luc’s kitchen, he would stumble over a corpse.

He had come close, once.

Too many drinks and too much ecstasy; and Tony had been there. Because Tony was  _ always _ there, collecting bruises on his knees from the chipped tile, holding Adam upright and forcing him to vomit again and again until nothing had been left. Cursing and praying in the same breath, pushing water and Pedialyte and fretting over the risks involved in bundling Adam into the first available cab and dragging him to the hospital.

“Tony.” And Adam has no right to say his name with such gentleness, so much hurt and heartache. “I’m sorry.”

It doesn’t matter; it is already done and buried. Tony shrugs. “This time there was fire. I heard you -- I heard my mother -- but I could see only flames and no doors.” The smoke had choked him. Acrid. Heavy. The flames blistering, licking at his skin, melting out his eyeballs. And in the dream, Tony had screamed and screamed.

Adam reaches for him. Tony flinches.

“What can I do?” To help, to apologize -- to make any of this better.

“There is nothing to be done.” Tony’s voice is heavy, slurring at the edges with exhaustion and deeply resigned as he brushes past Adam in the bathroom that suddenly seems far too small. There are sleeping pills on the nightstand, prescribed by Dr. Rosshilde. And Tony hates them, the way they fill his head with cotton, turn him slow and groggy, but there seems little alternative.

Adam’s hands clench and unclench on the edge of the sink. He is helpless, and Tony is hurting -- and Adam is sick with the knowledge that, once again, it is all his fault.

“Go back to bed.” Tony wraps his arms around his middle, hesitating in the shadow of the bedroom doorway. “At least one of us should get some sleep.”

“I --” Adam wants to protest. To fight. But what is there to say? “Fine.”

As much as Tony wants to ask him to stay, as much as Adam wants to offer -- they each retreat to their own corners of the flat. Neither one of them sleeps well.

Adam wakes with the first hazy drift of sunlight over the horizon and he is sure Tony must be avoiding him -- is well aware of the maitre d’s ability to sulk. But he showers, dresses, and still there is no sign of Tony stirring. The flat is still, silent, and it is late enough that -- whatever his moods -- Tony should have emerged by now.

He would have noticed if Tony had woken up early. And, despite the pouting, Tony is not so petty that he would go to so much trouble just to avoid him.

Adam risks rapping his knuckles on the bedroom door. “Hey, Tones?” He listens at the crack for any sounds of life. “Better get rollin’ now or you’re not gonna have time to blow-dry your hair.”

Silence.

From the back of the couch, Jefa stares at him. Imploring.

“Tony?”

There is an unspoken agreement between them about privacy, individual space, but Adam risks opening the door just a crack. After the midnight revelations -- Tony’s tear-stained face and the quiet, miserable admissions -- he has to be sure that he is all right.

At first, it seems there is no sign of Tony Balerdi in the sparse little bedroom. The wan sunlight spills pale through the window, the blankets in a tangled heap on the bed. And then, Adam spots it, the slender hand reaching from the depths of the bedding-nest.

Somehow, that hand wraps itself around his heart and squeezes.

Tony has been working himself too hard. Running around like a madman, managing the restaurant, trying to reshape his world back into some kind of order, to find and furnish and finish the minutiae of their new flat. Fighting off the nightmares and the memories.

In his mind’s eye, Adam still sees Tony’s stricken face.

_ Something terrible would happen and I would find you, dead and cold. _

_ This time, it was the fire. _

At least for the moment, Tony has found some measure of peace.

Jefa leaps down from the couch to twine herself around Adam’s ankles and Adam raises a finger to his lips, shushing the cat as he draws the bedroom door closed again. 

He scribbles a note for Tony on one of the piflered notepads of Langham Hotel stationary, leaves it propped up on their brand-new-used coffee table where Tony is sure to see it.

“You’re in charge,” he tells Jefa.

She preens.

When Tony finally emerges from his sleep cocoon, the afternoon sunlight is brilliant and spilling into their flat -- his sleep had been dreamless, heavy. It lingers like a fog around his brain and he can’t quite figure it out, cannot put his finger on it, but something is wrong.

Something is…

The flat. Adam. Dreaming and nightmares and the hotel --  _ the hotel!  _

He is late for work.

Tony stumbles from the bed, tripping over the tangle of bed covers. Frantic, addled, and somewhere in the back of his mind there is a whiff of smoke. The memory of screaming, klaxon fire alarms and hazy heat and he has to remind himself that everything is all right -- that he can breathe -- before the world wobbles and tilts back onto its axis.

Jefa has found a patch of sunlight on the living room floor, soaking up the warmth. Her nose twitches, curious, at the sound of Tony’s quiet footsteps and he crouches for a moment to scratch between her ears.

And there is the note on the table -- big, scribbled letters.  _ TONY!!! _

He hesitates to read it, after the scene he had made. Adam will be apologetic of course, will let him down gently, but he will ask to break the lease, will want nothing more to do with Tony Balerdi. There are bigger things for him; Michelin stars and miracles.

_ Will tell Kaitlin you’re taking the day. Get some rest, you work too hard. -- A _

There is a crooked smiley face too, tucked into the corner of the page. The sight of it makes Tony’s heart leap.

He should go to work. He should call about the insurance payout. He has to do something, to exhaust himself. Then, he will not have the energy to panic, will be able to sleep more than two hours in a night. And yet he finds himself sinking into the corner of the couch, tucking his legs up beneath himself, wrapped in pajamas that still feel too new and clutching Adam’s note.

Coffee.

His brain is dull, sanded down around the edges by a soul-deep exhaustion, but he can still manage coffee.

Tony makes it halfway to the kitchen before the realization hits. They do not have a coffee maker.

They still do not have so many things.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake.” He shakes his head, exasperated with the never-ending awfulness of it all, and Jefa lifts her head to stare at him with curious, yellow eyes. “You think this will get any easier?”

She does not have an answer for him.


	8. Chapter 8

“Does Rosshilde know?”

This has become something of a routine for them -- a new sort of normal. On the days when the weather is too bad, pouring down grey London rain, they take shelter on the Tube. But, most mornings, they walk the twenty minutes from Bedford Square to the Langham. The air is cool and damp, the sun a pale haze on the horizon. Adam enjoys it; the early morning stillness, the companionable silence.

Tony pulls his head out of the steaming coffee thermos -- blinking himself into awareness -- and Adam likes this too. The way Tony slowly comes awake, coaxing his brain to life with the liberal application of strong coffee. “Hm?”

“Rosshilde” Adam repeats. “Does she know?”

About the nightmares. About their flatshare. About the fire.

“Oh.” Tony wilts. “Yes, she knows.”

She’d had more than a few things to say about his living arrangements, too. On more than one occasion, Tony has poured out his heart on the subject of Adam Jones in her comfortable, sunlit office. And Rosshilde had used words like ‘masochism’ and ‘unhealthy relationships’ and ‘questionable coping mechanisms’ while watching Tony with eyes stern and knowing behind her spectacles.

“She is glad I am not alone.” And this much, at least, is a filtered version of the truth. “But, she did express her concern over things like ‘healthy boundaries’ and mixing my work and my life too much.”

Adam laughs. Neither one of them has ever been good at the work-life balancing act. And he knows it’s dramatic, but their work  _ is _ their lives. “Bringin’ the office home with you?”

“Something like that.” Somehow, Tony conjures up a smile for him.

Taking the turn down Tottenham Court Road, they are met with a rush of late-autumn wind. Adam jams his hands into his pockets, still unwilling to concede to the weather in more than his beat-up leather jacket. 

“Well, I do appreciate knowing your therapist’s opinions on your work-life balance, but I wasn’t really asking about that.”

The dreams.

Tony grimaces, searing off several taste-buds with a choking swallow of too-hot coffee. He still wakes most nights with his face wet and his skin clammy, the last vestiges of nightmares and half-memories clinging like cobwebs in his mind. 

He has not said anything to Adam.

“Who do you think is prescribing me the sleeping pills?” And then, softer, Tony admits miserably “I thought they were helping -- did the noise wake you again?”

Yes. In the short weeks, Adam has become sharply attuned to the half-muffled cries and quiet whimpers from Tony’s room. But Tony insists on coping on his own, insists that this  _ is _ him coping, and Adam will not shatter the uneasy truce there.

“Nah, you’re fine.” And, easy, fond, Adam careens sideways, bumping Tony lightly with his shoulder. “I’m just wondering about the early morning zombie routine, is all.”

It earns him a pout, Tony hitching up his shoulders and speaking into the rim of his thermos. “Sadly, not all of us have the capacity to be awake and ready with the sun.”

Adam is more than well aware. It will take Tony at least two hours to become a fully functional person, longer without the coffee. He grins. “So, I take it I probably shouldn’t try and discuss menu changes with you right now, huh?”

“You can,” Tony hums. “Does not mean I will have any useful input for you, however.”

“That’s fair.”

Somehow, this -- whatever it is between them now -- is easier than it ever was in Paris. There is something comfortable to the give-and-take. Time has sanded down the roughest of Adam’s jagged edges, has shown Tony how to hold his own with a sharper tongue.

He finds it fascinating when they wander up the rear entrance ramp, the way Tony visibly shakes off the last vestiges of sleepiness, settling into this version of himself -- managerial, pleasant Tony who is all polite service and warm energy. Adam has come to see just how many shades of Tony Balerdi there are and -- while he likes the maitre d’ spitfire well enough -- he finds that he has grown fond of the private, introverted Tony. The one he sees only in the privacy of the flat, and even then only in glimpses. Quiet, soft, curled into a human pretzel in the corner of the sofa with paperwork to read through.

At the door, Adam throws an arm around Tony’s shoulders, squeezing him in a sideways hug. “Have a good day at work, honey!” He has always been a tactile person, has always teased and touched and harassed.

It means nothing.

Still, Tony cannot shake the flush of want from his cheeks when they part ways.

He is not on service today, has forced himself to slow down and sort through all the administrative minutiae that have fallen by the wayside. Now, at least, his head is clear enough to concentrate on bills, bookings, and schedules. 

Tony leaves the office door open. And this time it is not an escape route -- a safety precaution, just in case -- it is just an open door, keeping him connected to the white noise chaos of the kitchen.

The hours drift by like this; Tony working fastidiously on neglected spreadsheets and accounts, and for a brief moment he can relax. Can pretend that everything is fine and there is not still a hint of panic singing in his bones.

His cell phone rings.

“ _ Antonio _ .” It is Stefan Whitehall, equal parts irked and paternal, and Tony knows there is a lecture coming. “ _ Did you plan to tell me about your living situation, or was I meant to discover this based on your new mailing address? _ ”

“It has all been sorted,” Tony is quick to reassure him. Exasperated. He had hoped to avoid this. “There is nothing for anyone to worry over -- especially not Papa.”

“ _ He is your father, of course he would worry about you. Especially _ …”

Tony flips through the schedule printouts. “Especially  _ what _ ?”

“ _ Especially now that he is _ dying.” Whitehall sighs. “ _ I know your relationship with your father was always difficult… _ ”

“You do not need to try and make amends on his behalf.” Tony has had this argument before and his tone is sharp, final. “I love my father, but I am not going to take his money.”

It had stung enough to plead his case to his father in the London office three years ago, returning in shame from the failed endeavor in Paris. To ask for the position in the Langham restaurant. 

“ _ Now, he only wants -- _ ”

Tony knows all too well what his father wants.

_ If your father didn’t own this restaurant, you’d have been fired years ago _ . 

Adam had not understood.

The Balerdi patriarch had long held faith that his stubborn son would come to his senses -- would leave behind the service work he had loved and fought for -- to follow in his father’s footsteps. A degree in economics, business, a position at the head of the Balerdi enterprise. But Tony had always insisted; he loves his work, he is content.

“ _ I don’t know why you won’t let me help you. Let your  _ father  _ help you. The money from his assets is more than sufficient -- _ ”

“Stefan, you and I are both aware that there is nothing for free -- especially not loans from Papa -- and I am not interested in contracts and conditions.” It would only become another way to turn him into a dancing marionette. A means of control over a not-quite-wayward son. 

A sigh. “ _ Fine. At least tell me you’re all right, then? I know… well, I just want to know that you aren’t trying to shoulder it all alone. _ ”

“I am fine,” Tony insists. “I will manage -- I  _ have  _ managed. And I am not alone.” He hesitates to explain; Stefan Whitehall does not know the extent of his love for Adam, not the way Doctor Rosshilde does. But his adoptive uncle knows enough. “Adam has moved into the new flat with me.”

“ _ Oh Christ. _ ”

“Stefan --”

“ _ You’re living in a flatshare with your unstable, drug-addicted chef and you expect this to reassure me? _ ” His despair is clear across the line. “ _ Antonio… _ ”

“Adam has changed.” Tony counters sharply, risking a wary glance toward the open office door. “He has changed and he is my  _ friend _ and there is no reason for you to bring him into this.”

“ _ Tony, be reasonable. You have to understand how this sounds… _ ”

And Tony is done.

He is not interested in anyone else’s opinions of his life, his choices, his love. If this is help his family will offer, he will accept none of it.

“Finalize the paperwork on the insurance claim for me, please?” His voice strikes like flint. “I do not need Papa’s money.”

Before Whitehall can protest, Tony thumbs the ‘end call’ button. Folding forward, he drops his head into his hands. Sighs.

Maybe he is being prideful.

His father -- Whitehall -- they mean well enough…

He is just  _ so _ tired of it all.

It seems a cruel joke, the universe forever laughing at Tony, that there is a knock at the door frame -- hollow on the frosted glass -- and it is Adam, storming the office with a plate in one hand and the twist of a frown marring his brow.

“Lunchtime.” Adam deposits the plate on the corner of Tony’s overburdened desk, arms folded expectantly. “What’s with the face?”

Tony shakes off the question. “There is no face.”

“Tony --”

“Is just my face.” He does not have the energy for another discussion, for twenty-questions and awkward sympathy and  _ kindness _ . “You did not need to --” Tony gestures ineffectually to the plate. “I’m not hungry, really.”

Adam quirks an eyebrow. “I know for a fact, Tones, that the only thing you’ve ingested today is coffee.”

Unfortunately, he does have a point. Tony grimaces, drawing the plate of greens and pasta closer for inspection. “I am going to have to start running again if this continues.” But even as he complains, he finds himself picking up the fork. “I eat only your cooking, I will get fat.”

“I’ve seen  _ your  _ cooking,” Adam reminds him with a wry look. “Hell, I’ve tasted your cooking -- forget fat, it’s incredible you didn’t waste away before me.”

Strange, how time has separated itself into these distinct periods. Before Adam. Paris. After Adam. And now… what are their lives meant to be now?

“It may not be worthy of Michelin stars, but my cooking is fine.” Tony pokes at the food, his protest feeble -- born mostly of the automatic rhythms of their conversations. The teasing, the fondness; a meeting of the minds.

“Well, you’re right that you won’t be earning any stars for it,” Adam concedes. “C’mon, you’re my taste tester. I think I oversteamed the kale.”

Tony takes a bite, pretends to take a long moment considering. It is good, of course it is. But he hums and cuts a sideways look at Adam through his lashes. “I think you are right.”

“Damn it.”


	9. Chapter 9

They do not talk much at home. And isn’t that a strange concept, Adam has to think, that the flat -- Tony and Jefa and their quiet, comfortable space -- has become _home_. There are pleases and thank yous, good nights and mornings; brief exchanges. All the words are used up in the walk to and from the Langham, in the chaos of the restaurant where they argue and insist and make miracles happen.

Hurrying through the chilly Saturday rain, pressed together beneath the shelter of a single large umbrella, there are plenty of words to be said.

“You’re fucking with me, right?” Adam, incredulous, still measures his stride as they hustle themselves up the loading ramp; careful not to tip the umbrella’s runoff onto Tony.

And Tony had known it would not go over well, had tried to couch the suggestion in discussing their recent reviews, the steady rise in booking requests. He follows Adam into the foyer, shaking the rain from his peacoat. “Is just a television spot --”

“I’m not doing it.”

“ _Adam_.”

Shrugging out of his jacket, Adam leaves the umbrella leaning by the door just to be petty -- watches as Tony automatically reaches around him to drop it into the bristling umbrella stand instead. “I don’t need to whore myself on camera for a bunch of hosts who don’t even know how to cook an egg to convince people to eat here,” he insists as they head for the kitchen. Three of the young, black-clad busboys scatter before them.

Tony sighs. “That’s not --”

“It is, and you know it.” For all their arguing, Adam is remarkably gentle when he takes Tony by the shoulders, shuffling him out of the way to reach for the crisp smock and apron hanging on their peg. “The food speaks for itself, that’s all we need.”

“Advertising cannot hurt, though” Tony protests, exasperated. “And it would not kill you.”

“You never know.” He joins Max at the _saucier_ , leaving Tony shaking his head as he disappears into the office. There is no missing the silent mirth that Max cannot quite hide, trying and failing to bite back a grin. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing.” Max is careful not to look at him.

“ _Something_.” There is a joke somewhere, a prank that Adam hasn’t caught onto yet -- if his staff have been fucking around during prep, there will be hell to pay. He reaches to stir the sauce, testing its thickness.

A shrug.

“You two,” Max elaborates at last, a little unsure in his admission, green eyes flickering toward the open office door. “You bicker like an old married couple.”

Adam drops the spoon back into the pot. “Fuck off.”

Whatever it is that happens between Adam and Tony -- the bitching, the times they lose patience and snap at one another -- it is nothing like the screaming matches of Adam’s childhood. The terrible vitriol. The violence of shattered plates and bruises, the vague memories of his parents shouting matches, and too many aunts and uncles drunk and flinging curses back and forth across dingy kitchens.

He comes close, sometimes; screaming at the staff -- tearing into the chefs on the night of that first, awful reopening. Adam has _raged_ at his chefs, at the world. But not Tony.

Never Tony.

He isn’t quite sure why.

It is a question, curling in his belly; a hollow, unsettled sort of wondering that has slowly started to take form. A tug behind his navel that almost feels like longing. The sensation of it sits with Adam as they fly through service -- the madness of the lunch rush blurred into the organized chaos of dinner. It is there when they walk home together, weary and satisfied with the hum and clatter of the restaurant still ringing in their bones.

Tony coos at Jefa, trailing feathered toys along the floor for her to chase. Adam scribbles a few barely-legible notes on menu plans and potential recipes in the battered notebook full of tallied oysters, and he does not think anything more of it.

Except that he cannot help but linger in the morning; over the way Tony knots his tie with expert fingers, over the three teaspoons of sugar stirred into his coffee, the solid warmth of him pressed into Adam when they sway silently toward Oxford Circus in the confines of rush-hour on the Tube.

Adam is hyper-aware of him in the kitchen, on the periphery. Tony appearing and disappearing throughout service, running plates when the servers start to be overwhelmed by a restaurant booked to capacity. He assists and anticipates, knows every one of Adam’s gestures and frowns and subtle tells, heads off the crises before they can ever happen.

And Adam knows Tony just as well, recognize the particular upward tick of his eyebrows when he turns from the _poisson_ to find him waiting at the pass. “What’s with the face?”

Tony’s mouth tightens. “There is no face -- is nothing.”

Balancing the hot pan over the pass, Adam says over the hiss and sizzle of oil “you look worried.”

He knows the way Tony twists his fingers into knots, the automatic ‘Hail Mary’ in the way he rolls his eyes to the ceiling, as though he might find divine inspiration between the fluroescent lights. “A complaint -- nothing to do with the kitchen.”

“Okay.” Adam risks a glance up at Tony. “So what’d they have to complain about?”

“It was just --”

He is too focused on Tony and not focused enough on what he is doing and the seared cut of turbot teeters on the edge of the spatula. Splashes down in the shallow slick of cooking oil. “Jesus _shitfuck_!” A million white-hot pinpricks up and down his bare forearm. Sudden, blistering pain. “God damn it!”

Snarling expletives between gritted teeth, it is only years of training that keep Adam’s fingers wrapped around the pan handle. Rescuing the skillet from his grip, Tony is all gentle hands, demanding “here -- here, let me see” as Adam curls over his wounded arm, pressing his forehead briefly to the cool counter top. “Michel, the pass please?”

“I don’t -- fuck.” More irritated with his own stupidity than with Tony, Adam whirls from the pass, heading for the utility sink in the corner. “It’s fine,” he snaps, cranking the cold faucet. “I’ll slap a band-aid on it. I don’t need you to --”

Tony ignores him, well acquainted with Adam’s easily bruised pride, offering Michel a nod of thanks as he cracks open the medical kit mounted beside the sink -- burn gel, sterile gauze, medical tape. He knows this routine.

Of course, the kitchen stops for no man -- executive chef or otherwise -- and he is quick to catch the first waitress through the door. “Sacha! The orders for table seven, will you see the out, please?”

Sacha favors him with a thumb’s up. “Got it, boss.”

Hunched over the narrow sink, Adam’s back is firm; muscled and sweaty beneath Tony’s hand when he risks touching, coaxing Adam away from whatever recriminations are running over and over in his mind. “Come,” he insists. “You cannot wrap it up with only one hand. Let me see.”

With his arm throbbing and the warm ghost of Tony’s slender hand between his shoulder blades, Adam lets himself be led into the office. The noise of the kitchen is dampened by the glass wall, to match the muffled cacophony of noise and emotion that batters the insides of Adam’s skull. He sinks automatically onto the edge of the narrow, uncomfortable couch and it’s like coming off a high, like needing a fix -- the itch and the want and the shredded edges of his nerves. This cannot be happening.

“You okay?” Tony spares him a worried, frowning glance, picking through the supplies he has scattered over the couch cushion.

“Yeah. Fine.”

In one fluid motion, Tony sinks to his knees before him and Adam is not sure that he is okay at all. Unthinking, he spreads his legs wider, granting Tony space to work bracketed between his thighs. Tony gestures for his arm, the skin pockmarked with old needle marks gone red and angry with freshly-scorched welts. His hands are cool -- soft -- manipulating Adam’s forearm with infinite care as he addresses each spattered burn.

“What was the complaint?” His arm is screaming, each individual mark clamoring for attention from his wrecked and tangled nerves. He forgets, sometimes, that his body can still hurt, can still break and bruise and burn; forgets that things can hurt.

“Hm?” Tony smoothing the burn gel -- aloe vera and analgesic -- in careful swathes over the pulse point leaping in the hollow of Adam’s wrist.

“You said someone complained.” Adam shifts on the couch, twisting his arm beneath Tony’s quiet ministrations. It is easier to ignore the pain when he is talking, thinking of other things. “What was the problem?”

“Oh.” A shrug. “Just unhappy with the wine.” Tony studies Adam from beneath his eyelashes, lets Adam see the sparkle of wicked mirth there, the slightest curve of a smile. “Apparently the _Albariño_ was too dry.”

And, really, customers say the damndest things. Adam barks out a laugh.

He finds himself searching the contours of Tony’s face as he works; the way his face scrunches up in delight at Adam’s laughter, the serene focus as he winds the lengths of gauze around and around Adam’s forearm with expert hands.

“Hold this.”

Adam replaces Tony’s slender, graceful fingers with his own, holding the gauze in place while Tony tears strips of medical tape.   

“Well,” Adam chuckles, examining Tony’s handiwork. “I think you’ve successfully mummified me.”

Tony sits back on his heels with an arch look. “Perhaps it does not look so nice, but at least I think you will live.”

“Oh, you think so?”

“Certainly,” is Tony’s firm pronouncement. “There is too much riding on your continued existence for it to be otherwise.” He stands, dusts his hands off on his trousers, and Adam is caught by the way fondness and faith make Tony’s umber eyes shine. “Besides, I think now there is a great deal you are living _for_.”

Adam blinks.

“The third star.”

_Oh._

“Yeah. Of course.”

They are both quiet, caught up in their own thoughts, when they walk home that evening, all of the words already exhausted between them. Adam studies Tony in the twilight, in glimpses and fragments out of the corner of his eye -- the curve of his cheek illuminates in golden-orange lamplight, the satisified weariness that softens the corners of his eyes.

He would have to be an idiot, not to know.

Tony does not push -- never asks -- but Adam knows that he is interested, is in love with him, in his own shy, uncertain way. He had known it in Paris, when they had both been so young and incomplete; the few times when Tony had been a little bit too drunk and a little less uptight, flush-faced and bright-eyed, flirting with Adam beneath the noise of the bars.

And it had never quite been that Adam wasn’t interested -- he’d taken his share of handsome, lean-muscled boys home from clubs in the small hours of the night. But there had always been that sharp delineation between a one night stand and _Tony_.

Tony, who Adam would have destroyed; who would have been dashed to pieces -- collateral damage -- in the wreckage of Adam’s vicious downward spiral.

He had expected all manner of things, touching down in Heathrow. Had imagined a million different ways that their unhappy reunion could go in the Langham’s dining room, the hotel suite. And clearly his imagination had been lacking, because in all the arguments he had conjured and the apologies and the fights, he had not considered the fact that three years later Tony would still be so firmly resigned to loving him.

Fumbling for the door key, Adam knows that he is too brusque -- abrupt and sharp-edged without cause -- barely muttering a “good night” before he disappears into the shadows of his bedroom with the door locked and the length of the shared flat between them.

Adam listens to the quiet sounds of Tony moving through their flat, murmuring to Jefa. He waits for the spill of light to disappear beneath the door.

Fragments and fractions of Tony move across his mind -- a smile, a loose comma of hair flopped across his brow, the shifting jasper shades of his eyes in the sunlight. And the unformed, hollowed-out question in Adam’s core blooms at once with fierce, painful wanting. To kiss. To touch.

Three years -- clean, sober, celibate. It's just misplaced desire, just a libido left lonely and untouched for too long. Adam is still only human, after all. It is just stress, just a need for relief, and they are practically living on top of one another; it's only natural to imagine...

Unbuttoning his jeans, he tries to conjure an image of Ann Marie; tanned and slender and all serious, consuming eyes. But when he slips a hand into his pants, palms himself through his boxers, it isn't her hazel eyes smiling up at him.

Tony. In the early mornings with his eyes closed, cradling a coffee mug in their sunlit kitchen; all sleep-tousled hair and endless legs, wearing only boxers and Adam's faded, too big t-shirt and looking like he has found nirvana in the bottom of his coffee cup.

And Adam cannot pretend.

He strokes his cock and groans, imagining that it is Tony's clever fingers -- Tony with his hand down Adam's pants, blushing and eager. On his knees again, pupils blown, with his mouth stretched around Adam's cock...

 _Oh shit_.

Body lax -- spent -- Adam watches the shadows shift across the ceiling. He has to wonder; Tony has never asked, has always contented himself with the little Adam has been capable of offering. Would he want more? Could Adam give it to him?

For so long now, he has not been sure he has it in him to love. Not really. What would it be like to try, with Tony who has become so much an extension of himself? His partner. His friend. Would it break him if they did not work?

Adam can't bring himself to risk that.

He has no idea that Tony has heard every sound -- every moan and creak of the bed frame -- listening with his heart twisted up in agonies. Entirely unaware that Adam is thinking of him too.


	10. Chapter 10

They need to talk; but Adam doesn’t even know where to start and it is  easier for Tony to pretend -- that had not affected him, that he hadn’t heard. Tony is good at feigning ignorance, even if just the sight of Adam feels like salt rubbed into the open wound.

He is already in the kitchen, dropping bits of egg onto the floor for Jefa as she twines lazily around his ankles. Tony should  _ not _ be jealous of the cat. But he watches as Adam bends to scratch the grey patch between Jefa’s ears and his stomach twists itself into a knot, conjuring up the sounds he had heard from the other side of the flat, how he had wished to be the one Adam touched, to be the one to draw the low, eager sounds from him...

Sensing Tony’s eyes on him, Adam turns, waggling the spatula in greeting.

“Hungry?” 

The words in Tony’s mouth turn to dust. “No.” Too quick, too harsh. He tacks on an awkward, “thank you” for good measure.

“You sure?” 

Adam looks him up and down with the faintest of furrows between his brows, searching. For what, Tony has to wonder. Shadows of sleeplessness beneath his eyes? The tense draw of his mouth and too-tight line of his shoulders? Evidence of exhaustion, of nightmares and things that will explain away the abrupt bite to Tony’s words which has nothing to do with stress and everything to do with his own hopeless love.

“Egg whites only,” Adam prompts. “Just the way you like ‘em.”

It is too early and Tony’s control is fragile -- tenuous at best -- and the words are like a slap. “I said  _ no _ , Adam.” His hands clenched into white-knuckled fists at his sides, tight enough that his tendons creak, that his nail leave deep marks in the flesh of his palms.

Adam stares. And this isn’t what Tony wants at all -- his stomach churns and his lungs are tight and he wants to take it back, to stammer out an apology and sweep it all away. But Adam only shrugs. “Suit yourself. There’s coffee if you want some.”

What Tony wants, he cannot have. And he has had that same thought so many times these past few months, it is nothing to squash it down again and swat it aside before it can start to unfold. 

Forcing the tight coil of his body to soften, Tony ducks his head, does his best to hide the tremor in his voice. This -- for once -- is not Adam’s fault. “Thank you.”

He drinks it too quickly, scalds his tongue.

Still, the echoes of Adam -- moaning, springs creaking -- sneaks again and again into Tony’s mind. He showers, wondering what had caused Adam to make  _ that _ sound? Threads his tie into a perfect Pratt knot and thinks of all the things he would do to hear Adam make those sounds again, to be the cause of them.

He blushes.

Adam smiles, waiting for him at the door.

He burns.

The walk along Goodge Street is silent until Tony cannot stand it anymore. If he doesn’t say something -- anything -- Adam will know; will read into him and see exactly what Tony is hiding. So he asks “did you see the  _ Times _ review?” Returns to the solid ground of safely familiar topics: the Langham, cooking, their restaurant. “I thought it was quite good.”

“Yeah.” A snort. All disdain, Adam squints up at the sky, rattling the quote off from memory.  " _ Adam Jones at The Langham is now one of the best and most interesting places in London to come and eat. _ "

Tony frowns -- he’d thought Adam would be pleased. It is a good review, after all. Respectable. “Which part of it don't you like?”

Adam gives a long, disgruntled sigh. “I don't want the restaurant to be a place where you come and eat.” He watches as confusion scrunches the smooth planes of Tony’s face. “I don't want my restaurant to be a place where you just fucking -- we should be dealing in  _ culinary orgasms,  _ Tones.”

And -- hearing that dangerous, damning word -- Tony’s heart gives a queasy flutter.

Entirely unaware of the quickening of Tony’s pulse, Adam rolls his shoulders, still talking. “I mean, when's the last time you had an orgasm that was...  _ interesting _ ?”

Stricken, Tony grasps for words, forming silent sounds with no idea how he is meant to respond. If he is honest, it has been ages since he’s had any kind of orgasm, interesting or otherwise. “Er…” 

Again, his mind circles dangerously around to the bedroom door. To Adam. To himself, waiting in the darkness, agonized and flushed with wanting.

“Never mind.” Adam waves him off, unconcerned, even as he notes rising heat in Tony’s cheeks; shy, straight-laced Tony. “People eat because they're hungry, right? I want to make food that makes people  _ stop  _ eating.”

Tony makes a face at him.

“Cooking,” Adam insists “is an expression of who we are. And right now we're two stars. It's a two-star review.”

A frown. “You say this like it is a bad thing.”

“It is.”

“ I did not think so.”

Adam squeezes his shoulder, rocking Tony on his feet. “Michelin will.”

He is right. Tony knows it. Michelin are ruthless critics and the spotlight on the Langham is growing brighter by the day; they must be ready for them.

And so Tony finds himself gathering his waitstaff in the empty dining room, watching the cool London drizzle against the Langham’s high bay windows. He paces before them, hands clasped neatly at the small of his back. His pupils. He will drill into them the same lessons that Gio Bertuccio had instilled in him over the course of so many years in Jean Luc’s restaurant.

Kaitlin flanks him, raking her dark eyes over their staff; a commanding presence at Tony’s side in spite of her small stature.

“ Do you know --” Tony addresses them, knowing each waiter’s resume by heart. Each of them has been trained to perfection by his own hand, some of them having started as no more than dishwashers. “-- about the Michelin men?”

Yana’s answer is half a question. “It is a book?” 

“Not  _ a  _ book.” Kaitlin admonishes her gently. “It is  _ the  _ book, Yana. The Bible.”

It is what will make or break them.

What Adam -- and Tony -- are so desperately yearning for.

Propped in the doorway, Adam lingers on the dining room’s periphery, taking in the lilt of Tony’s speech -- the music of his voice is enough to settle the squirming in Adam’s core, and yet his words raise the hair along Adam’s forearms with warning.

“Michelin sends its inspectors to restaurants to eat and award stars,”  Tony says. “One. Two. Three.”

“Or none.”

Adam cannot resist the interjection -- the shadow of fear that stalks his heels.

Tony’s nut-brown eyes find Adam over his shoulder, favoring him with a nod. Half confimation, half reassurance; this will not be their fate. He won’t let it be. “No one knows who they are,” he says, and the cadence may be all Tony but the words are Bertuccio’s -- echoed from a lifetime ago. “They come, they eat, they go. But they have habits.”

Watching the flickers of unease across the faces of the waitstaff, Adam can’t help the way his own skin prickles with fear, the unease roiling in his core. He  _ cannot _ fail.

“They have to stick to a routine to give every restaurant the same chance.” 

Adam does not listen -- he has heard this all before, has memorized the same speech Tony is giving now. Michelin are judge, jury, and executioners. His chest grows tight at the thought, familiar panic squeezing it’s way up into his esophagus, and he forces himself to focus only on the ebb and flow of Tony’s soft, confident voice. Reminds himself to breathe.

Unconsciously, he scratches at the crook of his elbow, at the places where the scars itch most fiercely.

“Everything from now on must be perfect.” And Adam is speaking to himself as much as to their assembled staff. “Not good, not excellent --  _ perfect _ . If they find one single thing wrong, they will kill us.” It is not an exaggeration, not for Adam. If they fail, it will kill him. “And they will come for us soon.”

Tony’s eyes are heavy between his shoulder blades when he walks away.

Anxiety -- a relentless, gnawing dread -- settles in Adam’s bones, turns to a static hum of white noise that travels up along his brainstem. It blocks out any other thoughts, quashes whatever questions Adam might have raised to interrogate the complicated fantasy that had visited him in the late night darkness. Now, everything is narrowed down to perfection. The third star. To knowing whether or not he is still worth anything.

The cravings start again; compulsive wanting that crawls beneath his skin, makes the scar-tissue punctures in his forearms itch.

He could perform miracles, riding the highs.

Except when he couldn’t.

Service is an exercise in obsession, in fatal flaws, everything imperfect, imperfect, imperfect. The noodles -- meant to be  _ al dente _ \-- are too soft and Adam feels like he might climb out of his own skin. David over-sears the fish and Adam  _ screams _ .

The kitchen is falling to chaos around their ears.

It will not be enough.

When they turn out the lights, leaving the Langham under cover of darkness, it is only because he has Tony at his elbow that Adam does not make an immediate detour for the nearest drug dealer.

He can’t. He  _ can’t _ .

It will fail -- Adam will fail -- and everything they have rebuilt here will go to ruins.

There is no sleeping with all the what ifs and the could be’s unspooling, spiraling through his mind. All the ways that things could go wrong, every small imperfection, picking apart his every flaw and failing. He spends an hour tossing and turning in the blue-black midnight, unable to shake off fever dreams of catastrophe. Apocalypse. The bruising, bone-deep ache for a fix.

Adam does not trust himself. Not in these small, dangerous hours.

He will do something stupid.

Galvanized by the electric prod of fear and desperation, Adam beats off the tangle of sheets, heaving his wrung-out, jittering body from the bed. He has to do something. Has to be perfect, tip-toeing silently into the kitchen to avoid waking Tony.

Fumbling for the light switch, Adam squints, finds Jefa -- a comfortable lump of grey and white -- watching him from the kitchen counter. She yawns, breaking their silent standoff with bared teeth, and leaps from the counter to streak away into the safety of the shadows.

Adam finds bleach and towels beneath the sink, cleans every inch of their already spotless kitchen with single-minded obsession. He can manage this; cleaning, cooking, digging the necessary ingredients from the cabinets. Clafoutis. A pastry recipe he knows by heart, one that will keep his hands busy, that requires just enough focus to take the edge off the wild banshee that screams in his hollow parts.

He beats the eggs with flour and brown sugar. His hands shake, tipping almond extract into the mixing bowl, splashing too much milk.

No good -- it’s too runny. He’ll have to start again. “Damn it.”

The mixing bowl goes in the sink, and Adam forgets that it is well past midnight, scrubbing out the failed batter with a clatter of metal-on-metal, muttering curses to himself. All wrong. He is better than this.

Curious, eager for any scraps that might make their way to the floor, Jefa pads into the kitchen to watch Adam. She flicks her tail at him, unimpressed.

“What?” 

Blink.

“You have to have the right balance,” he insists, talking because he doesn’t know what else to do -- trying to drown out the need. “You know? The batter can’t be too soupy. Or gritty. Do it wrong, you wind up with shit instead of pastries.”

_ You’re being crazy again _ , he imagines the admonishment from Jefa who licks her paw and stares, impassive.

“Yeah, well, of course I’m gonna be a little crazy -- it’s got to be perfect. And that?” He stabs a finger at the sludge of batter abandoned in the sink. “Was not.”

_ Adam _ was not perfect.

“Fuck.” The thought shakes him, knocks him down onto elbows braced against the counter with his fingers threaded through his hair, trying to block out the rising cacophony of doubts. It’s all right. He is going to do this right. He can still fix this.

A new batch of batter, everything measured out in perfect precision. Adam hunts through the cabinets, rifling through the doors of the refrigerator for cherries -- there are none.

Jesus Christ. He could scream. How is he supposed to earn three Michelin stars if he can’t even manage to get Clafoutis right?

“Fucking --  _ see _ ?!” He waves his hands at the mess, his voice too loud, his head spinning. “Pastries. Fucking simple and I can’t even...” He has tried so hard. Fought tooth-and-nail for his sobriety, and still he is damaged goods -- a fucking junkie -- and he is going to fail. The only thing he’s good at, the one time his life has been truly, unabashedly  _ good _ , and he will ruin all of it.

“Adam?”

Just his name --  _ Ah-dam _ ? -- spoken with such soft concern, strikes Adam in his core.

Wearing Adam’s borrowed pajamas, Tony lingers in the shadow of the bedroom door rumpled and rubbing at one sleep-clouded eye.

“It’s half-past one.” His voice changes, ever-so-slightly, when he is tired -- something Adam has only recently found himself noticing. The way syllables start to blurr, the hum to the words as Tony slips deeper into his first language.

“I know.” Adam sighs as some of the tight, bitter frustration uncurls from around his heart. “I know -- you wanna tell me how much of a fuck-up I am too?”

Baffled, Tony cocks his head, following Adam’s line of sight to where Jefa crouches, staring between them. “Who told you that you are a fuck-up?”

“Never mind.” Adam is too raw for this discussion, all his nerve-endings exposed and screaming. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to wake you.” He knows Tony manages precious little sleep these days.

But Tony waves him off, wraps his arms tightly around himself as he steps into the kitchen’s light. It highlights the tension in his brow, all of the questions and the confusion in his kind eyes. “How bad?” He knows better than to ask if Adam is okay -- they are both so far beyond that.

Adam rakes a hand through his hair, looking over the wreckage of the kitchen; flour dust and the almond extract spilled across the counter and the litany of recriminations hammering steadily at the inside of his skull. “Not great.”

A long, silent stare.

“Bad,” Adam finally concedes.

Tony nods. “Okay.” They have been here before -- the breakdowns, the anguish -- this time things will be better. It is his turn now to keep Adam afloat. He pushes past Adam to address the worst of the mess in the kitchen, shooing away Jefa who has come to investigate the carnage. “What did you make?”

“Well, it was gonna be Clafoutis,” Adam offers lamely. “But we’re out of cherries.”

“Ah.” Tony purses his lips, lifts his eyebrows in a way that makes it almost funny, Adam losing his goddamn mind over these small things -- there are no cherries, but the world is not ending -- and still there is something immeasurably understanding in his expression. A familiar, reassuring kindness. “Is no matter -- the batter will keep overnight.” 

Adam watches, bereft, standing unmoored in the middle of the kitchen as Tony covers up the mixing bowl. Sees it stowed safely away in the refrigerator.

The confession that escapes him is sheepish, heavy with guilt.

“I could really, really go for a drink right now.”

Or something stronger.

“It won’t help you.” Tony does not look at him -- the words firm, immediate. Whatever Adam may want, there is no alcohol in the flat. He is not about to tempt fate.

“It did.” And Adam hates this version of himself; the wretched, shameless Adam Jones who will plead and wheedle for just one drink, only a single hit -- just enough to take the edge off. “It did, Tony --”

“No, it didn’t.” Tony’s scowl brokers no argument as he fills the kettle. “You drank like a fish and you snorted crack cocaine and all it did was make you burnt out and crazy.” He gestures to the sofa. “Go sit down.”

Objectively, Adam knows he is right. The doses of cocaine and heroin and booze had not helped -- he had been manic, unhinged, had courted death and been more than ready to die because it had always been a better option than failure. Drugs will not ease the hurt, will not make him a better chef, but still the  _ wanting _ gnaws through his veins; ravages him from the inside out.

He sits.

Jefa, conspiring with Tony to keep him from doing anything particularly stupid, leaps up to settle herself on his lap. Adam strokes the slender line of her spine, eyes on Tony as her claws pick out pinpricks on his thighs. “You can --” He waves an awkward hand in the direction of the bedroom. “I mean, one of us ought to get some sleep…”

“I wasn’t sleeping.” Tony offers him one of the twin mugs, steaming with chamomile tea.

It is a lie, but one that Adam will gladly let slide if it means having Tony on the couch beside him for now. This late, with the two of them worn so raw around the edges, there are no more boundaries between them. Tony does not bother with keeping a polite distance between them now, settling solid and warm against Adam’s side.

The weight of him, the press of his shoulder into Adam’s arm, the angle of his hip against Adam’s thigh is a grounding force. It leeches some of the white-noise ragged pain from Adam’s bones, soothes the tangles of his shot, craving nerves into silence.

Tony reaches across him to scratch between Jefa’s ears. “Tell me about New Orleans.”

Something else to focus on; something that isn’t addiction or failure or the new, strange turmoil that has taken hold within his heart and wrapped itself around the name  _ Tony Balerdi _ . 

Adam talks.

Between sips of chamomile, he pets Jefa and tells Tony about the three years missing from their shared history. New Orleans. The French Quarter. The humidity. The music that had lent vivid color to the air. His painful efforts to mix kitchen French and Creole. The mosquitoes. Tony hangs on every word, his eyes bright and caramel-soft, his thumb smoothing unconscious circles over the throb of Adam’s pulse.

It bleeds the tension from Adam, drawing his spine slowly down until he is slouching into the sofa. He breathes a little easier. Tony is quiet, a secure comfort at his side, and Adam lets his head fall heavy onto one slim shoulder; feels the way Tony tenses for just a moment before he shifts, settling them both more comfortably.

Neither one of them says a word.

And Adam could not say for certain when or how it had happened, but he knows it as sure as anything. In all their shared history, in their recent proximity, in all the hurt and honesty and hope they have shared -- somehow, Adam has fallen in love with Tony Balerdi.

He falls asleep holding onto that notion. Wakes only once, to find his head in Tony’s lap and the long, careful fingers stroking idly through his hair. 

“You should not sleep like this” Tony admonishes him softly, though he does not expect Adam to hear. “We are not so young anymore, your back will not thank you in the morning.” Still, his fingers card their way through the scruff of Adam’s hair, unperturbed.

He must leave Adam to his own devices on the couch at some point, because Adam wakes to find the lines of microfiber imprinted on his cheek and Jefa watching him -- unblinking -- from the armrest.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Periodic reminder that Jake is the best human ever -- everyone thank him for his endless patience and willingness to proofread AdamTony smut for me <3 (Ich liebe dich, you wonderful person, you!)

Tony cannot shake the weight of Adam from his body, the tingling memory of short hair sliding through his fingers. Something had passed between them -- all the times he has talked Adam down; all the hangovers and blackouts and raw, bloody breakdowns. But it had been different, last night.

Not the out of control Adam -- hysterical and raging at the world -- but Adam with the bravado stripped away. Vulnerable. His fears laid bare.

“I’m thinking if we arrange the tables…”

Across from him, among the clutter of his office, Kaitlin has laid out seating charts. Tony should focus, should be considering how they will organize the dining room to accommodate the large reservation tomorrow night, but he is entirely consumed with questions, anxiety trying to gnaw its way through his sternum.

What to do with this new Adam? This Adam who leans so heavily against him and trusts that Tony will hold him up. Who sings in the shower -- badly -- and makes coffee in the mornings -- excellent -- and who was the last person Tony would ever have expected to hold his hand through the tears and the fire-and-smoke panic attacks.

“You’re distracted.” Kaitlin rolls her eyes at him across the desk, giving up on seating arrangements and staffing. “What is it?” She demands. “What’s the matter with you?”

Evasive, Tony shrugs her off, squirming beneath the sudden scrutiny. “I am fine _. _ ”

She raises one immaculate eyebrow.

“I  _ am _ .” He reaches across the desk, shuffling through the Langham’s mail for want of something better to do -- something to still his nervous, fidgeting hands. “It’s nothing -- really.”

The skepticism Kaitlin radiates is  _ palpable _ .

A shout from the kitchen -- Adam -- and immediately Tony sits up straighter, focused on whatever has happened beyond his half-closed office door. But there is no new catastrophe, just a demand that everyone “pick up the goddamn pace” and Tony is not going to interfere but his eyes linger just a moment too long, all of him tuned into the sound of Adam’s demanding baritone, and Kaitlin understands exactly what is happening here.

“Ah, boss.” She settles back in the chair, shaking her head with so much dismayed fondness. “You’ve got it bad.”

“What do you --?” Tony flushes, even as he knows there is no point in protesting. Kaitlin knows too much, and Tony cannot quite manage to hide the heart worn forever on his sleeve.  “I do not.”

“ _ Tony _ .”

“ _ Kaitlin _ .” He imitates her tone, petulant. “I am not discussing it.”

She recrosses her legs, smoothing out the line of her skirt to hide the smug smile tugging at her lips. Watching from the corner of her eye, knowing that she is right, Kaitlin waits for Tony to soften, working away his own resolve. “Does he know?”

Tony scratches at the tip of his nose, deeply preoccupied, and his eyes flicker again toward the office door. “No.” But there is a hesitation there. He twists his fingers into knots, palms tingling all over again. “Perhaps? I don’t know.” He can’t decide which is worse, that Adam hasn’t noticed the infatuation, or that he simply doesn’t care to acknowledge it. “I suppose it doesn’t matter, really -- I do not expect for him to…”

“To fall in love with you?”

She is far too sympathetic. Tony has to look away. “Yes.” He does not want to be having this conversation; all at once he shakes himself, mortified. “I shouldn’t -- why am I talking about this with you? I can’t believe -- you are my employee, it is entirely inappropriate…”

Kaitlin remains entirely unimpressed with his attempts at avoidance and obfuscation. “I’m also your  _ friend _ , Tony.”

And lord knows, he doesn’t have many of those.

“I know,” he admits with a sigh, deflating. “I know. How did that happen again?”

A smirk. Kaitlin is relieved to see some of the mischief return to his boyish face. “Simple,” she tells him. “It’s solidarity, love.”

Tony throws out one last diversion. “How is Theresa?”

“Wonderful as ever,” Kaitlin hums, softening at the mention of her wife. But still she will not let Tony get off so easily. “And, like me, wondering what on earth you’re doing sharing a flat with the straight man you’re in love with.”

“He is not straight.” The response is automatic, delivered in a mournful monotone that nearly knocks Kaitlin off her chair. Tony spares her a wry, miserable glance “At least, well, I don’t think so. Bi, maybe? Pan? Certainly, he has slept with men before.”

_ Oh _ , Kaitlin thinks. Oh, she is truly starting to see the full picture now, and what a sorry sight it is.

“But not you.”

“No.” Tony wouldn’t care, though, not really, if Adam never fucked him. It is the knowing that for all his friendship, Adam will never love him the way Tony wants -- the way  _ he _ is in love -- that kills him slowly. “Not me.”

And he is sure he has admitted more than he has said aloud because the words leave him vulnerable, frighteningly exposed to Kaitlin’s steady, sympathetic stare. He ducks his head, grimacing. At last, Kaitlin reaches across the desk, squeezing his wrist in silent reassurance before she stands -- vanishing back into the dining room.

“ _ Mierda. _ ”

What a pointless endeavor; hoping for the impossible.

_ In my restaurant, everything will be possible _ . 

Adam’s brazen, foolhardy words.

_ Not everything is possible _ , Tony could have told him.  _ I know this. _

Perhaps Kaitlin had been right, when -- the two of them ever-so-slightly tipsy after wine tasting -- she had insisted that Tony ought to set himself up on a dating app.

A terrible prospect, really.

But then, Tony reflects, his current situation is no better.

He reshuffles the thick stack of mail that has spent the better part of the morning lurking at the corner of his desk. Bills from suppliers, event notices, advertisements. And, mixed within the mess, a creamy envelope embossed with Adam’s name.

Knowing that Adam never bothers to read his own mail and it will likely end up unopened in the nearest bin, Tony unseals the envelope, surprised to find the name Montgomery Reece scrawled in thick ink along the bottom.

Well, Tony thinks. Fuck.

They have reached the predictable lull between breakfast and the lunch rush and things have slowed to a marginally less frenetic pace when Tony braves the kitchen. “Adam?” He has to raise his voice above the din. “You have an invitation.”

Adam -- whisking furiously -- pivots from the pass to pinch up another portion of saffron. “Who from?”

“Reece.” Tony scans through the details again. And it is so  _ very  _ Reece in its presentation; all pompous self-importance and neatness. “He invites you to the relaunch of his restaurant -- I thought he hated you?”

“He does. That’s why he invited me.” Adam glances up from the line of plates awaiting finishing touches. “When is it?”

“Tomorrow night.” Tony shrugs in apology. “I found it mixed up in the mail today, otherwise I might have warned you sooner.”

“Don’t worry about it. Tell him yes.”

And Tony still entertains half a fragile, tenuous desire that leaves him hesitating, lingering at the corner of the pass. “Adam… there is an opportunity for you to bring a guest." He rocks back on his heels.  _ Ask me _ .

Whatever it is in his tone -- the silent plea, the question that trails off into silence -- it makes Adam sit up and take notice. And, at the sight of those brilliant, ice blue eyes Tony’s courage wavers. 

“Take someone nice with you.” Cowardice prevails and -- instead of the myriad of questions, of small hopes, on his lips, he finds himself saying “if you get yourself into a fight with him, I will not pay your bail.”

“Noted.” Adam favors him with a quick, crooked grin. For half a second, he considers asking --  _ come with me? Keep me from getting into a fight with Montgomery-fucking-Reece?  _ His eyes follow the blush that creeps up Tony’s slender throat, burning hot in the tips of his ears, and the words are almost there, but in an instant Tony is turning on his heel -- swallowing hard against the crushing swell of embarrassment -- and the moment is gone.

_ Que patetico _ . 

Tony curses the dangerous flutter of his heart.

He is hopeless.

They do not mention it again. Tony does not leave the office until well after service has ended. Neither one of them can quite manage more than a handful of words on the dark streets, in the empty carriage as the train rattles and roars along the track toward home. 

The distance between them has never felt so great.

And -- once again -- Adam finds himself leaning on his elbows in the thin glow of the stove light, unable to sleep. Like worry stones, he turns the thoughts and questions and fears over and over again in his mind. Reece. The invitation. Michelin stars. The  _ almost _ in the way Tony had looked at him.

Adam should have asked.

He knows.

Tony loves him. The quiet, tender crush he’d nurtured in Paris still softens his caramel-colored eyes, still hints sad and sweet at the corners of his mouth. And Adam  _ knows _ but he had never really  _ acknowledged _ … 

It has always been simply on of the unshakeable facts of life. 

The sky is blue. 

Water is wet. 

Salmon tartare goes best with Pinot Noir. 

Tony Balerdi loves -- is  _ in love _ with -- Adam Jones.

He should ask Tony to come. 

But...

They are living together. 

But...

He had jacked off to the thought of Tony with his lips wrapped around his cock. 

But...

What happens if he is wrong? If they don't work?

But -- Adam loves him.

And he is not unfamiliar with that notion; with loving and being in love with people, despite his fucked up childhood and the attachment disorder Doctor Rosshilde has tried to pin on him, but… this is  _ Tony _ .

Somehow, Tony matters in a way that Adam never could have predicted.

Midnight has passed them by some minutes ago and London is quiet -- not quite silent, but reduced to relative stillness beyond the four safe walls of their flat, and Adam is wide awake and the itch has started again under his skin again and he cannot stop thinking.

_ What am I doing? _

He almost misses it. The first soft whisper of a sound that comes from Tony's bedroom -- " _ oh _ ." Barely there. Adam might have imagined it.

But there is no imagining -- not in his most dangerous dreams -- the soft moan. The breathless, broken-off  “ _ Adam _ ” or the way the sound of his name  _ like that _ in Tony’s mouth stirs some sharp, empty ache in the pit of his stomach.

Tony loves him and Adam wants him and it is pointless to keep dancing around each other, to try and spend forever avoiding this unspoken thing that ties a knot between them.

Like a lifeline, that ache -- love, the barely-muffled creak of bed springs, draw Adam barefoot across the cold hardwood floors to Tony's door. Tony, who had waited with his insides twisted up in agonies, thinking Adam was asleep. Whose stifled gasp on the other side of the door cuts Adam to the quick, striking low and hot with  _ wanting _ in his groin.

The door sighs open; an invitation. Adam hardly has to touch the knob.

Half-closed curtains, the haze of London's midnight spilling through, and Adam sees it all in fragments. The shadow of Tony's eyelashes against his cheek. The pinpricks of freckles scattered between his shoulder blades, along his ribs. The artless flop of soft, soft hair in a perfect comma over Tony's brow and the strange, yearning little frown there. The toes curling into the bedsheets. The two slender fingers that Tony works steadily into himself.

And it is the fact that Tony had moaned  _ his _ name, that he whispers "Adam" while he grips the headboard and fucks himself on his knees, that nearly knocks Adam over right there in the doorway.

_ Oh, fuck. _

There they are -- the last few, insubstantial barriers between them, falling away. And there is  _ Adam _ and there is  _ Tony  _ and the way Adam can feel his heart pressing against his ribs -- his pulse quick and eager and afraid.

And whether it is the creak of the door closing in its frame or the first barefoot step across the hardwood that gives him away, Adam will never know. But Tony's whole body stutters. Freezes.

The color drains from his face.

"Tony."

There is a strange, terrible moment where Tony's wide eyes blink too fast and Adam is sure he might start to cry. Instead -- nauseous, stomach churning with hot, horrible mortification -- Tony says flatly, "I would like to die."

"Don't do that. At least, not yet." Lust cools in Adam’s belly to something softer, some warm and tender affection that settles comfortably under his skin. He risks another half-step closer to the bed. “What’re you doing, Tones?”

“ _ Adam _ .” Isn’t it evident? The miles and miles of Tony's slender limbs tremble, unwilling to support him. A minute shift, and he is struck again by the sheer awfulness of this moment -- the weight of Adam's blue eyes and the whiskey-grit of his voice and  _ Tony's fingers still up his ass _ . He wants to die. He wants to burn up to ash. Wants the bed to open up and swallow him whole and spare him this whole ordeal as he extricates himself with a cringe. “Adam, please --”

_ Please, don’t ask. Please, get out. Please, don’t speak of it -- don’t make me say it... _

Adam is across the room in an instant, without seeming to take a single step, sinking onto the edge of the bed. And he has never had to be so careful, has never been so frighteningly aware of all the shatter-points and fracture lines that could make up a person. He can  _ see _ the leap of each rabbit-fast heartbeat in Tony's chest, the terrified whites of his eyes. Questions roll off him in silent waves, shame smoldering under his skin.

“I  _ mean _ , what are you doing in here pretending?” And slowly, ever-so-slowly, Adam closes the space between them. He trails his knuckles up the warm line of Tony's side, tracing the curve of his floating ribs. Tony's entire body shivers beneath the small touch. “When you could just ask me.”

And Tony doesn't understand. Can’t bring himself to imagine it.

He has spent too long certain that Adam could never love him. Has wrapped himself in this assumption and worn it like armor around his fragile, tender heart.  _ I love him and he does not love me. He doesn’t love me, so it doesn’t matter. _

Now, he closes his eyes. Swallows down the cry of grief, of sheer blinding relief, that threatens to choke him. “You -- I don’t…” It's too frightening. He wants, and he  _ wants _ , but he cannot possibly fathom that it could be real. “You can’t mean that.”

This time, Adam's warm, dry hand cups the curve of his cheek. Holds him steady. Tony leans into the touch in spite of himself. “I do.” 

A rare thing, to hear such conviction -- such certainty -- in Adam's voice. That sound is reserved for Michelin stars, for the greatest kitchen in the world. For miracles.

Not for Tony.

They are so close now. Adam can feel the sheen of sweat cooling on Tony's skin, raising gooseflesh. Can taste the heat of his fragile, panting breaths -- almost tears. "I mean it, Tony," he promises. Feels the way Tony shivers. "But you’ve gotta say yes.”

And, in defiance of the fear that gnaws away at his bones, Tony does.

Few times, he has allowed himself to imagine what it would be like; kissing Adam -- being kissed by Adam. Those stolen, secret day dreams pale in comparison.

Adam kisses in contradictions, all stubble-scrape and soft mouth, kissing with a fierceness -- like he might consume Tony -- that belies the gentleness of his hands, the way he cradles Tony’s face and strokes his hair. And Tony, melting beneath the ministrations, has no idea what to do with his trembling hands or the crush of emotion that threatens to overwhelm him; and he is crying and Adam is kissing him and Tony opens up against him -- offers everything -- even as his heart seems to shatter.

Trailing feather-light kisses along Tony’s jaw, along the line of the pulse-point in his throat, Adam savors the salt and sweetness of him -- sweat and the lingering bite of faint cologne -- feeling the hitch of the bitten-back sob, the way Tony trembles against him. “Hey.” His breath is a humid sigh against the hinge of Tony’s jaw, and Adam pulls away to capture his chin, to smooth his thumb over the little dimple of emotion there, to trace the wobble of Tony’s wet bottom lip. “Hey, look at me.”

Tony does, his eyes wide and bright in the darkness, and he knows Adam can see all too clearly the questions -- the things he doesn’t want to ask. But still, Tony  _ has  _ to know. “What are we doing?” Adam’s hands are roaming, smoothing over the velvet of Tony’s bare skin, mapping his slender topography with a single-minded focus. “What is this?”

Dangerous, is what it is. Disastrous. And Tony should put a stop to it because this can’t be happening -- it can’t possibly mean anything -- but his skin sings wherever Adam touches him and Tony is not quite strong enough to shrug off whatever affection he is being offered.

“ _ This _ ,” Adam hums, sitting back on his heels to strip off worn-soft t-shirt “is something I should’ve done years ago.” And it is all shadow and low London light, but all Tony can see is the growing strain of flannel pajama pants, the endless, golden expanse of  _ Adam _ . Those scarred, calloused hands stroke their way down Tony’s arms to tangle their fingers together, and Adam traces the angle of Tony’s clavicle with his mouth as he guides slim fingers back to the juncture of Tony’s thighs.

He wants to say  _ I’m in love with you _ , to put to words all of the incredible, terrible, convoluted sensations caught up inside of him -- but Adam has never had a way with words. Doesn’t know how to explain his new understanding, the fierce affection that possesses him and shakes him to his core.

“How long?” Tony’s thighs are slick, sticky with lube, and Adam teases the pads of their twined fingers into the curve of his ass and it is many questions wrapped up in one. How long have you been in love with me? How long has it gone on like this? How long have you been alone in your bedroom wanting and hoping?

“Paris.” Tony’s voice is small, the words catching as he rolls his hips. “Since Paris.  _ Follame _ \-- since the first day I laid eyes on you.”

And that.

That was a long time ago. Adam’s heart breaks and swells all in the same instant to think of them -- a lifetime, an eternity ago. Twenty-one years old. Tony a newly-minted eighteen, trailing after  Bertuccio through Jean Luc’s kitchens.

So much lost time between them.

Somehow, Adam vows they will make up for it.

“Paris.” A new flavor to the memory, to the sound of the city on his lips. A new heat burning beneath his skin. Adam is achingly hard and it has never mattered less, all he knows is Tony and every minute shifting of his body, every gasp and sigh and shiver as Adam presses him down into the mattress and plants kisses over his thundering, anxious heart. “When we were in Paris, when you’re in here on your own, pretending that it’s me touching you -- fucking you -- what do you imagine?” 

“I…” The heat of Tony’s blush rises up to meet him, and Adam thinks how absurdly precious it is that even now, in the state they’re in, Tony is still so  _ shy _ . “It is stupid.”

Never.

“You like it rough?” Adam rocks against Tony, guiding his long legs apart. “Imagine me pushing you down into the mattress and fucking you until you can’t waltz your way around the dining room without feeling me?” Oh, he  _ knows  _ Tony; maps all the little tells and eager sounds as he explores the body beneath him. Adam would give him everything, anything he asked. “Or do I draw it out slow? I could tease, keeping you on edge for  _ ages _ before I finally give you what you need?”

As he talks -- teasing, tormenting -- Adam explores his way between Tony’s thighs, the cleft of his ass, testing all the ways he can make him writhe and moan. The first brush of his fingers, the pad of a thumb pressed just right against Tony’s entrance, and Adam revels in the way he gasps, seizing with the lightning-shock of it. “ _ Adam! _ ”

“You okay?” Adam finds the bottle of lube standing guard on the nightstand, lets Tony watch with anticipation tripping through each heartbeat as he pops the cap, slicks his fingers.

“Yes.” Tony nods, “Yes -- I’m fine, I…  _ oh _ .” He rocks into the sudden, exquisite pressure of a blunt finger, bites his lip and rolls his hips as Adam works cleverly inside him. “Please.” Tony isn't even sure what he’s begging for. Everything. Anything Adam will give him. "Please, I need…”

“I know” Adam soothes. “I know -- I’ve got you.” 

He kisses Tony’s thighs, curls his fingers and fucks blissful, punched-out little sounds from him. And Tony, embarrassed to be heard, to be seen by Adam all flushed and wrecked and wanting, turns his face into the pillow, throws an arm across his eyes. It’s too much. He can’t bear it -- Adam’s eyes so absurdly soft, his fingers stretching Tony, stroking him, all drawn-out pleasure and adoration. Adam fucks him with a single-minded intensity, like there is nothing that could possibly matter more than the sweet spot that makes Tony arch off the bed and  _ shout _ .

In the few fantasies Tony had allowed himself, he had never dreamed that Adam might care for him; that he would kneel between Tony’s thighs and kiss every inch of him and ask him in that raw, wondering voice “this good? You okay?” when he lifts Tony up and flips him over, the two of them molded and moving together, Adam fucking him with his fingers, the heat of his cock sliding against Tony’s ass.

“Yes,” Tony says it again and again until there is no more meaning to the word, says it in every language he can remember. “Of course.  _ Yes _ .”

Adam crooks his fingers just right and Tony is flying -- falling -- and the world goes bright white, every nerve alive like Tony has been shot through with lightning. And as Tony seizes around his fingers, Adam is following him over the edge, sinking his teeth into the meat of Tony’s shoulder, painting a sticky mess between his thighs.

In the sudden stillness, they blink phosphenes from their eyes and draw shuddering breaths like drowning men, rocking with the aftershocks.

“Fuck,” Adam whispers into the heat between Tony’s shoulder blades. “ _ Fuck _ .” His whole body quivers, muscles reduced to a liquid that refuses to support him, and he buries his face in the nape of Tony's neck, the two of them sweaty and sated and remembering slowly the form and function of their wrung-out, heavy bodies.

Ridiculous, Adam thinks. How fucking ridiculous that it's taken him this long, that he hadn't realized sooner, that they could have been doing this all along.

Tony, pinned beneath him, sucks in a trembling breath, scarcely able to fathom everything that has just passed between them. Adam's warm weight molding him into the mattress, come slick and cooling on his thighs. "I…" He has no idea what he is supposed to say. What happens now. His heart trembles. “Thank you.”

_ Idiot _ . 

What a stupid, foolish thing to say.

But there is a smile pressed into the line of his spine and Tony feels more than he hears the rumble of laughter rolling in Adam's chest. "Don't thank me yet," Adam insists as he kisses the knob of Tony's skull, drags his palm over the chaos of his soft hair.

And then he is gone -- rolling over -- the safe, warm weight of him lost. He peels himself away and the wretched, vulnerable anxiety flares with familiar poison in Tony's hollow core. A one-time fuck. Quick placation. Adam will go back to his room and none of it will matter and Tony will be left alone to curl into himself and attempt to put the miniscule pieces of himself back together...

The mattress shifts again, dips low where Adam kneels over him with one warm hand at the small of Tony's back. "Lift up a little for me" he coaxes, kneading Tony's fucked-out muscles. And it is all Tony can do to oblige -- over-sensitive and utterly drained -- as Adam cleans him gently with his discarded t-shirt, passing the worn-soft material over his quivering belly, wiping the come from his thighs and softening cock.

He must make some sound, a whimper -- a catch in the back of his throat -- because Adam shushes him, drawing Tony back against his chest so that his heart beats steady and secure against the curve of Tony’s ribs.

“Too much?”

It is. In the best kind of way, it is overwhelming and terrifying and too much for Tony to even begin to process. His mind manages only fractures and fragments and he hesitates just long enough to pierce Adam with a horrible thrill of doubt. And he doesn’t  _ understand _ \-- he had thought… 

Adam shifts, uneasy when he offers “I’ll go if you want me to.”

_ Ask me to stay _ .

“No.” Slender fingers seize him around the wrist, Tony curling into the warmth of him. “Stay -- please?” He cannot quite make himself say the final, damning words aloud:  _ I love you _ .

Adam folds him closer, nuzzling into the warm, sweet curve of Tony’s neck. “Okay,” he murmurs. “Okay.” And Tony is sure he understands anyway.


	12. Chapter 12

It isn’t the first time Adam dreams of Tony -- of kissing sugar crystals from his skin, the two of them languid, encased in amber. Dark skies. Soft promises. The warmth of bodies moving together. And that should have been a sign all along; the frequency with which Tony had so subtly invaded his dreams, the way his name tended to appear on every list Adam tallies in the dark when he can’t sleep.

Tony is  _ always _ there.

In the dream he arches against Adam, clever fingers mapping skin, and sinks needle-fine claws into the hollow of Adam’s spine.

Jefa.

Adam groans, tries to catch the last of the dream as it slips away. Perched atop his back, unwilling to be deterred, fifteen-odd pounds of cat knead mercilessly at his kidneys. Adam manages a noise like “get off”, fumbling around the bedcovers to nudge Tony awake.

The mattress is empty. The sheets cooling.

“Tony?”

Dislodging Jefa with an irritable  _ mrrp _ , Adam props himself up on his elbows to frown at the space where Tony ought to have been; tucked close against his side.

Had he misjudged…?

On the other side of the wall, the hiss of hot water through the spigot, pattering on the shower’s porcelain floor. Head bowed beneath the spray, Tony traces the memory of Adam’s hands over skin that sings in the heat, the wonderful lingering ache that reassures him none of it was a dream.

Wasn’t it?

He still isn’t quite sure what to think.

But he had found himself awake in the pre-dawn gloaming, tangled in Adam. Had he conjured him? Had he still been dreaming? A sinewy arm heavy around his waist, the two of them melded spine-to-stomach, Adam breathing slow and heavy with his forehead pressed to the nape of Tony’s neck, a knee wedged between his thighs. And never in his life had Tony felt such warmth, a fuzzy contentment from the crown of his head to the soles of his feet, a security that had dissipated as Jefa -- demanding -- had tried to gnaw his toes off, as he had wondered just what would happen when Adam woke.

He had slipped out of the bed, then; had not wanted to stick around for the look of disappointment on Adam’s face, the way he would dance around the words -- wouldn’t quite say ‘last night was a mistake, I don’t love you’, but would try and couch it in something kinder. And that would only be more painful.

Sluicing water through his hair, Tony chases away soap suds. And with the shampoo -- spiraling around the shower drain -- the traces of Adam. Somewhere beyond the hissing of steam and shower spray, the bathroom door squeaks on its hinges. A habit, leaving it ajar for Jefa who insists on coming and going as she pleases.

On the other side of the glass, frosted and thick with steam, Adam can see just enough. Soft blurs of honeyed skin, the stretch of slender limbs and pert backside, and Adam is struck all over again by the tender welling of affection that lives behind his sternum.  _ Tony _ . It is in every fiber and sinew of his being; he loves Tony Balerdi.

He had been certain of it, the moment he had opened the bedroom door and seen Tony, a revelation in the twilight. He is even more certain of it now; as much as he  _ wants _ , for all that there is a part of him eager to climb beneath the spray and sink his teeth into the supple frame on the other side of the glass, it seems more important suddenly to linger in this moment -- to revel in the casually vulnerable, intense domesticity of watching Tony rinse three different kinds of product from his hair.

Adam might gladly spend the rest of his life here, leaning against the sink, watching Tony through the blurred shower glass. Unawares, arching his back beneath the hot water, Tony hums -- his voice rising an octave the way it always does when he addresses Jefa.  _ “Buenos días princesa. ¿Cómo vamos?” _

And Adam, who is most assuredly  _ not _ Jefa, offers a sleep-rough “mornin’ sunshine” from the other side of the partition.

Tony doesn’t scream. But it’s a close thing.

“Adam!” He slaps a palm over the damp hammering of his heart, the adrenaline like an electric shock beneath his skin. “ _ Por el amor de Dios _ !” 

“I thought you heard me come in!”

The shower door, cracked open, lets out a sigh of humid steam followed by Tony’s alarmed, heat-flushed face. “I thought you were the  _ cat _ !” Amid the rising hysteria, he is hit by the sudden throb of his heart as Adam scrunches up his face, laughing, the crinkles deep around the corners of his eyes.

“Jesus,” Adam chuckles. “You’d think I was Norman-freaking-Bates.”

“Who?!” 

“The motel guy,” Adam mimes a downward stabbing gesture, unable to quite smother his grin. “Stabbed the lady in the shower…  _ Psycho _ ? No?”

“ _ No _ .” And Tony cannot escape the fact that he is very, very naked and Adam is very much staring at Tony like he might devour him while discussing psychos. He ducks back behind the relatively safety of the frosted glass.

“Old movie, don’t worry about it” Adam hums, unconcerned. “C’mon, are you trying to drown yourself in there?”

Briefly -- ever so briefly -- Tony does consider it.

But it is the morning after, the light of day, and everything is still okay. The world has not ended. Instead, Adam still looks at him with so much adoration in his eyes, the glacial blue warmed by tenderness. They are still laughing, still teasing one another, and Adam is not trying to break the lease or explain last night away or flee -- he leans against the bathroom counter in his boxer shorts, contented.

“Not drowning myself, no.” Tony dares to be brave; easier, with the shower’s glass between them. “I am waiting for you to join me.”

Adam does so.

The force of him -- his sudden closeness, his affection, his  _ Adam _ -ness -- in the confines of their too-small shower hits Tony just beneath the solar plexus, staggers him. And somehow, despite the fact that Adam has already seen everything, despite the kisses he had pressed into the sweat along Tony’s spine and the deft fingers that had curled and stroked inside of him, Tony still finds it in himself to be bashful. There is something different about the two of them in the clear daylight, naked and -- for the first time -- truly  _ seeing _ .

Tony has to fight the absurd urge to cover himself, to hide even now.

“You weren’t in bed.” 

Adam tosses the words out casually enough, tipping his head back beneath the hot water. Tony licks his lips, the pit of his stomach dropping away -- he is beautiful. A demigod. An Adonis. And the statement -- not a question -- is steeped with meaning.

“No.” Automatically, Tony ducks his head. Scratches at the tip of his nose. “No, I wasn’t certain…” There is a fleeting expression in his eyes, the twist of his mouth, that Adam understands all too well -- the fear of being unwanted. 

Catching that anxious, all-too-open face in his hands, Adam trails a thumb along the curve of Tony’s lips, strokes the dewdrops of hot water from his cheeks. Wonders, briefly, if the damp that turns Tony’s eyelashes thick and dark contains tears. He would wipe every trace of uncertainty from the wavering of Tony’s soft features.

“I am.”

He believes it more every time he says it.

“You what? You’re...”

“Certain.” Adam draws him in, the two of them wet and warm and slipping so easily into one another’s space. Magnets. Puzzle pieces. Locks and keys. All of the cliches. “Of you. Of us -- whatever this thing is.” And he kisses Tony to prove it, even though he isn’t quite brave enough yet for the words:  _ I love you. _

The last vestiges of fear fall away from Tony with the kiss, something in him unlocked -- opening up at long last -- with Adam. He sighs, dizzy with the pleasure of it, and Adam swallows down the sound, savoring it. Tony’s slender fingers skim Adam’s ribs, trace their way along his ribs, and Adam kisses the column of Tony’s throat. And for all that they drown themselves in one another, all frantic and eager touches and hungry mouths, it seems there is all the time in the world to explore -- to enjoy one another.

Incredible. Absurd, really, that they haven’t been doing this all along.

“Adam.”

Tony is half hard already and yielding against Adam, the two of them electric with friction, moving against one another. Adam massages the heat in the dip of Tony's spine, encouraging, digging his thumbs into the Venus dimples there. He kisses every inch of Tony he can reach -- bared throat and soft mouth and the tender hinge of his jaw.

"Ada --  _ Adam _ ." Tony bucks against the sudden press of a finger, the pleasurable burn of it, squirming as though he cannot decide whether to pull away or to sink deeper onto the unbearable, perfect stretch. Adam slips into the heat like he belongs there, drawing out a soft, regretful whimper. “We don’t have time…”

"Shh," Adam soothes as he backs Tony against the cooling shower wall, stroking him from the inside out. He kisses a bruise into Tony's collarbone, draws his tongue over the prickling of gooseflesh along the bare expanse of his skin. "We've got plenty of time." 

They turn five minutes into an eternity.

Perched on the edge of the bed afterwards, knotting his tie, Tony is acutely aware of Adam's every fingerprint on his skin -- inside and out -- his body molded and reshaped by firm hands and hot kisses.

He is all contradictions, certain that he is floating and yet never more firmly grounded. Punch-drunk on love and adrenaline.

In the doorway's silhouette, he watches Adam hitch up his jeans -- still damp and golden and glowing -- and there is not an inch of Tony that is not entirely suffused with loving. Adam catches him staring, favors Tony with a smile. Rackish, sweet with new affection. And Tony has loved him since  _ Paris _ , and he wants to know -- has to wonder -- how has this all happened?

“You said you are certain about this. Us.” He flips down the neat line of his shirt collar. “Since when?”

And he is not the only one dazed -- bemused -- by the way things have unfolded between them. By the idea of loving and being loved. Adam searches in himself for the explanation Tony deserves, for a moment he could say  _ here, right here is when I fell in love with you _ . But it had been so gradual… had happened in such slow silence, that somehow he hadn’t even noticed it happening at all.

“I don’t know,” he admits, closing the distance between them in long, easy strides. “I think I must have been at least a little bit in love with you, the day I came back.” And he isn’t sure how to make these confessions, to admit to things he hardly understands, but he thinks Tony deserves to know. “You came out to the dining room just for a minute, and I had this  _ feeling _ , and I didn’t know what it meant -- not then.”

Tony in his grey suit, floating between the tables, charming and immaculate and smiling to outshine the sun. Maybe Adam hadn’t known then that he was in love, but he had been sure -- the certainty written into his marrow -- that he had needed Tony Balerdi.

He has to laugh at himself, exasperated with his own stupidity. “And I didn’t know when I ran like ten blocks just to find you after the fire, but somehow I still didn’t get it because I’m a fucking idiot. But then I move in here with you and your fucking cat and -- God -- it takes you three cups of coffee to turn yourself into a person, even though it’s more sugar than coffee, and you always,  _ always _ forget to put the dishes away once they’re dry. You iron your jeans -- who  _ does _ that? -- and you steal all my goddamn t-shirts.” And what else is he supposed to say? How else can he explain the way that Tony Balerdi has crept into his heart and set up camp. “And I  _ like  _ this, Tony. I like  _ you _ .” 

How could he not?

Tony’s voice is small, hoarse with emotion when he turns shining eyes on Adam. He doesn’t have to say it, they both already know --  _ I love you _ . Instead, he manages a quavering smile, says faintly “we’re going to be late for service.”

And before Adam can lose his nerve, before they leave the sanctuary of the flat and plunge back into the whirlwind of the real world -- pedestrians and kitchens and the endless cycle of dishes in and out of the Langham kitchens -- he asks. “Come with me? Tonight. To Reece’s relaunch.” It is only Tony who ever sees Adam this nervous, can read the bundles of anxiety knotted up in his chest. “You did say to bring someone who’d keep me from getting into a fight -- if you come I promise I’m not gonna deck him.”

Adam talks a lot; Tony is used to this. To the endless diatribes and the one-man debates, orders issued and philosophies expounded on -- but never has he said  _ so much _ . Tony doesn’t even have to pretend to consider it.

“It is a date.”

_ A date _ , Adam wonders as they drift toward Portland Place.  _ Fuck. _


	13. Chapter 13

Things in the kitchen don’t change -- not really -- only seem to settle into place at long last. They trade in soft looks and brief touches when no one is looking, Tony’s smiling eyes warm and flushed with pleasure, Adam’s fingertips finding the tender inside of his wrist, the small of his back.

“How are things in the new flat?” Helene poses the question innocently enough when Adam appears beside her at the saucier, humming under his breath while he makes corrections to the too-thin mushroom sauce. 

“Good.” Adam stirs in a dash of salt, nodding to himself when he tests the flavor. He is aiming for nonchalant, isn’t quite sure he manages. Had she seen them on the loading ramp that morning, when Adam had pulled Tony close and stolen a kiss against his warm, upturned cheek? What has she noticed? What does she know? “It’s all good. Why?”

Helene shouldn’t pry, shouldn’t press the issue -- only, she  _ likes  _ this new version of Adam. She had decided to hate him after that first night, had promised herself that working in the Langham was only temporary; a means to an end and a salary no  _ chef de partie _ could ever have expected to make otherwise. But for all his demons, there is something likable about Adam Jones, something human and occasionally kind and often funny -- especially now that he has moved in with Tony Balerdi.

“No reason,” she hums, but her fair eyes are wicked when she flicks a glance his way. “I’m only surprised it’s been this long and Tony hasn’t tried to smother you in your sleep yet.”

Adam laughs. 

“That reminds me,” he says. “I’ve got to go to this thing, Michel’s gonna handle the pass for the second half of dinner service, but I’m appointing you as his second-in-command.” 

It is a surprise, but not an unwelcome one.

“The  _ commis  _ actually listen to her” Adam tells Tony later, when they are standing on the street corner watching the passage of black cabs and pedestrians. And as Tony steps up to the kerb to hail a cab, Adam captures the raised hand in his own, tucks it to his side as he twines their fingers together.

The gesture surprises Tony. 

“Let’s walk.”

It is a chance to think, to dissipate some of the nervous energy that has started to gather between his shoulder blades. Tony indulges him -- always does. The sky overhead is clear, the sun descending along its slow arc to meet the horizon, but late autumn has started to cool the air. Adam regrets deciding that his battered leather jacket had not been formal enough to attend the relaunch, not that his single unwrinkled button-down is in a much better state. At his side, Tony fares only slightly better, having exchanged his suit and tie for a sweater bought on impulse to refurbish his depleted wardrobe -- soft cashmere, the same pale blue as Adam’s smiling eyes.

“I went to see him, y’know.” Adam strokes his thumb over the knobs of Tony’s knuckles. “ The first week I was here in London.”

_ You're an addict. So it's not alcohol now; it'll be coke, or booze, or fucking every girl you meet, because you're addicted to the way you feel every second of the day. _

“Oh?” 

There is a soft, too-casual note to Tony’s voice that clearly says he cannot imagine it was a meeting that went well.

“Yeah.” And, because it is Tony, because it has only ever been Tony who has understood -- who Adam can be honest with -- he lets himself admit “ he’s good. I hate to say it -- he’s a pretentious douchebag with no imagination, but he’s a good cook.”

Tony hums a noncommital noise of agreement. And then, too casual to be anything but a guilty confession, he says “you know, he asked me to work for him.”

He’d considered it, too.

Tony had been the last to leave Paris, in the end, the one to turn in the keys and shut the doors of Jean Luc’s restaurant for the last time. Six months later, Reece had found him in London, raw and heartbroken and making his way along the periphery of the close-knit fine dining world, uncertain what his next step would be.

They had met over coffee and Tony had managed to muster up a weak enthusiasm for the plans Reece had laid before him. Had met again to walk through the half-completed restaurant space.

“Huh _. _ ”

Tony scowls, offended by the faint incredulity in Adam’s ‘ _ huh _ ’.  “There is no need for you to sound so  _ shocked _ .”

“I’m not!” He isn’t, not really. “You’re the best at what you do, Tones, of course he’d want you working for him.” It isn’t just flattery, Adam means it -- had meant it in the empty dining room when he’d pressed Tony to say yes.  _ You’re the best maitre d’ in Europe _ . And he has to wonder, “what made you say no?”

As quickly as it had come, Tony’s frown melts away, his umber eyes twinkling up at Adam. “He is a pretentious douchebag with no imagination.”

Adam laughs.

Tony does not admit that he  _ had _ almost taken the offer -- unwilling to beg his father, to be once more under the senior Balerdi’s thumb. But things had been said. Gauntlets thrown. And in the end, Tony had too much fire and too much to prove and he had thrown himself headfirst into salvaging the floundering Langham. 

“You will have a third star of your own, soon enough.” 

A reminder. A promise.

But Adam has let his guard down and the doubt slips in, quick and cutting as any kitchen knife. “You think so?” He draws their clasped hands to his lips, kisses Tony’s knuckles to distract them both.

Tony.

Little Tony.

Antonio Balerdi, who has known him at his worst and still always seen the best in him. And Montgomery Reece, who had seen the worst and known that Adam Jones would never be any more than the sum of his own failures. An angel and a devil on his shoulders -- holding up twin mirrors to the two sides of Adam Jones.

“Of course I do.” 

Tony says it as though it’s the most obvious thing in the world, and Adam wants nothing more than to be the man Tony believes him to be.

They slip into the stream of arriving guests, a flurry of flashbulb photographs and indistinct faces. Adam, numb, flashes his invitation and refuses to let go of Tony’s hand. His ears are ringing with the cacophony of too much conversation and the fight-or-flight rise of panic in his throat. There are cocktail gowns and champagne flutes and the remodeled restaurant is all sleek, modern lines. Everything bright white -- sterile enough to perform surgery.

Adam focuses instead on Tony and the scattering of ginger freckles at his temple. “You look great. I forgot to tell you that, didn’t I?”

Tony practically glows at the compliment. “Thank you, you are not looking so bad yourself.” But as quickly as it comes the smile slides from his face, replaced instantly by a bland, unfailingly polite expression honed over years of customer service as he trains his gaze over Adam’s shoulder. “Prepare yourself.”

“Well, isn’t this a surprise?”

Adam does not have to turn to recognize the smug drawl. 

“Shouldn’t be.” He steels himself, turning to face their host. “You did invite me.”

Smugly unconcerned, Reece surveys his glory -- the collections of photographers, reviewers clustered around the banquet tables, the milling guests with their important names and deep pockets. “Oh, I knew  _ you’d _ show up like a bad penny” he dismisses Adam, turning grey eyes on Tony instead. “How does it feel Tony? After all these years, to be the Great Adam Jones’s flavor of the week?”

It could not have hurt more if Reece had reached across the space between them and backhanded Tony across the face. Anger bolts incandescent through his core, a lightning strike of hurt and indignation that ties his tongue, sends him stumbling over a curse. “ _ What _ \--?”

“Congrats, Reece.” Adam, interjecting, already knows it’s hopeless. It has always been Montgomery Reece and Adam Jones pitched against one another and Tony -- simply because he has always chosen Adam -- is the collateral damage. “You’re doing me almost as good as me. And you’re using butter -- where’d you come up with that idea?”

Reece doesn’t rise to the bait. He looks at Tony with something that might almost be sympathy in his eyes and says “I heard about your flat. I’m sorry, but honestly Tony,  moving in with  _ him _ ? You poor, stupid bastard. I thought you were smarter than this.”  

“I was not aware that my personal life is any business of yours.” Tony digs fingernails into his palms, the words snapping and brittle with frost.

_ Fuck _ , Adam thinks.  _ Fuck, fuck, this is all my fault -- _

“Oh, come on Tony.” There is a part of Reece that is jealous of Adam, of his talent in the kitchen, of the fact that -- shitshow that he is -- the man can still inspire such stupid devotion, such adoration from Tony Balerdi who could do so much better. “You’re so fucking clever and you can’t see he’s using you? The only thing Adam Jones cares about is  _ Adam Jones _ , and even that’s debatable. Or have you forgotten Paris?”

Even Adam -- drunk or stoned, or stoned, or drunk -- remembers it all well enough.

“Reece --”

In the terrible silence, with a hundred pairs of eyes watching the spectacle unfold, Montgomery Reece asks “did he fuck you before or after you gave him the restaurant?” 

_ Shit. _

All at once, the spring-loaded coil of Tony Balerdi unleashes and Adam watches -- stunned -- as Reece’s head snaps back, blood blooming from his nostrils. A chaos of gasps ripples through the gathered crowd. Scattered camera flashes. No one dares move.

“How dare you?” Tony’s voice quavers; eyes stinging, cheeks burning. And he is wrong. He is  _ wrong _ . He doesn’t know Adam and how much he has changed for the better, how he has held Tony together these past several months, how he spoils the cat when he thinks Tony doesn’t see and sings in the shower and knows just how Tony takes his coffee and how, together, they are building something miraculous. “ _ Folla a tu madre en el altar. _ ”

He would know.

If Adam were only using him, if this were truly Paris all over again, he would  _ know _ .

Fuck.

“Tony?” A voice in his ear, soft with concern. “Tony, hey --”

For all his faults, Adam had never used Tony’s feelings against him. Not like that. 

Fuck, fuck, fuck _ fuck _ fucking  _ fuck _ .

Mustering every ounce of his unraveled dignity, Tony draws himself up with a stiff upper lip and a stiffer spine. “Congratulations on your relaunch.” The words taste like acid and he swallows bile, turning on his heel, forcing his way through the crowd.

He doesn’t make it far, only to the other side of the street, before his legs threaten to give out beneath him, before he has to clutch at the low wall and dig his fingers into the cool stone while he tries to remember how to breathe. A part of him -- the sixth sense that is always sharply attuned to Adam Jones -- is aware of approaching footsteps, of Adam standing just beyond his reach, waiting for a cue.

 “He’s wrong.” Tony knows he is being hysterical, saying it over and over again to drown out the terrible doubt. “He’s wrong.”

Adam leans against the low wall, stretching his legs out. It is such a strange role reversal, to be the one calm and certain while Tony threatens to fall apart, and yet he is grateful for it in a way, the two of them at last on equal footing. “Tones.”

“Tell me he is wrong.”

“He’s wrong.” Adam doesn’t hesitate -- he knows how he feels, and not Rosshilde, nor Reece, nor God himself could tell him otherwise. He gestures to Tony, coaxing. “C’mere and let me see your hand.” Tony folds himself into Adam’s space, shoulders hunched and the breath knotty in his chest, offering his hand with trepidation. Adam turns it over in his grip, examining the smarting knuckles, kissing the first shadows of bruising. “I thought I brought you to keep  _ me _ from getting into a fight with him.”

Tony makes a small, miserable noise.

“I made lists, you know.” Adam, continuing to stroke his thumb back and forth across Tony’s hand, decides that it is a necessary confession. “When I couldn’t sleep, I’d always find myself thinking of things, making a list -- like a broken fucking record. My grandmother, Jean Luc, Ann Marie,  _ you _ .”

Tony does look at him then, an uncertain crease between his eyebrows. “What is this supposed to be? A list of regrets?”

“It was,” Adam concedes. “At one point.” 

“And… I am on your list?”

Adam nods. “Yeah. Somehow you find your way onto all the lists. The things I regret, the people I hurt -- that one crosses over a lot with people who matter the most -- and your name’s on all of ‘em.”

“Some very long lists,” Tony hums and he feels less like all the pieces of him are flying apart, spiraling out of control. “It’s no wonder you don’t sleep.”

A shrug. Adam scans the quiet street, purple shadows stretching out as twilight starts to descend around them. “I sleep a little better now,” he says it casually, casts a sideways glance at Tony. “But some pretty good things happen when I don’t.” 

It has the desired effect, a small smile tugging at the corners of Tony’s lips. “I’m afraid I caused quite the scene,” he ducks his head, embarrassed. 

“Nah, I’ve seen worse.” Adam stands, drawing Tony with him. “I’ve  _ caused _ worse. And it’s not like he didn’t deserve it.”

Tony  _ hmm _ ’s.

“I’m not -- I’m not fucking you for the kitchen spot, you know that right? I wouldn’t do that, not to you.” And Adam manages a disgruntled sigh, disgusted with his own ability to clearly make sense of it, to explain it. “You know I’m no good at this.”

There are a great many things that Tony knows about Adam Jones. Silent, he raises his eyebrows and waits for clarification.

“Relationships.” Adam makes an awkward gesture between them that rocks Tony on his feet, their fingers still tangled together. “Dating. I’ve never done it right -- I don’t think I’ve ever done it  _ sober _ . Or…”

“With a man?” 

“Well,” Adam hesitates. “Yeah.”

And this is it, Tony has to brace himself. This is Adam Jones’s Big Gay Crisis and it is going to happen on a street corner in the middle of London and it is less than twenty-four hours since Adam had appeared in the bedroom doorway like the most terrible sort of dream. Less than twelve hours, now, since he had pinned Tony against the cool shower tiles and stroked him slow and it hadn’t been a dream at all.

“But it’s  _ you _ ,” Adam says as though that explains it all.  _ You _ . Tony Balerdi. “It’s you, and I don’t want to fuck it up.”

Oh.

That’s…

Tony scratches at the tip of his nose, tries to collect his thoughts. Relationships. Dating. All out of order and all so fast and he had never dreamed that it might be possible, had never even let himself  _ imagine _ a relationship -- a romance. 

It is all so very, very new for the both of them. 

“We are friends,” he says at last. “Partners, yes? The rest -- we have time, it will work out as we go. Unless you are in some kind of hurry?”

And he is only teasing, the words gentle when he cuts his eyes up at Adam, but there is still a niggling of doubt at the back of Adam’s thoughts, an unease that creases his eyebrows. “No,” he says. “Not -- I just don’t want you to feel like you’re climbing back into the closet while I’m sorting out my bullshit.”

“That,” Tony says, looking at him like he has completely lost his mind, “is the stupidest thing I have ever heard you say. Back in the closet --  _ Dios mío. _ ” And, in spite of himself, he shakes his head and smiles. “We take time to sort out our bullshit, this is not the same thing as hiding. Perhaps we do not shout it from the rooftops yet --”

“Oh?” Of all the things to snag on Adam’s thoughts. “ _ Yet _ implies that there’s going to be a  _ someday _ .” The grin that he turns on Tony is pure wickedness, finding the maitre d’s hand in his own. “If we do sort out our bullshit and this thing between us works, should I climb on the Langham’s roof and shout it for everyone to hear? Neither one of us has Facebook after all, how else are we gonna let people know you’re off the market?”

Tony’s grin wobbles, splits itself open, and all at once he is laughing. They still have not moved from this corner of the street, fellow pedestrians moving in an unstoppable ebb and flow around them, and he is doubled over, shoulders shaking, sniggering with indelicate delight at Adam and the absurdity of it all.

Adam stares for a long time, his blue eyes shining. And then, in a voice soft with wonder, he says “God, I really am in love with you.” He loves him even more when Tony stills, laughter falling away in the wake of his words. Stunned.

This time, Tony smiles up at him and it is a tentative, crooked sort of smile as though he is still not quite certain of this impossible happiness. “I love you too.” He savors the words --  _ I love you, I love you, te quiero, te amo, I love you _ \-- the first time he has said them aloud, lets Adam kiss them lightly from his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> is this chapter a mess? I can't even tell anymore.


End file.
